Elizabeth Masen
by Plikk1t
Summary: Edward's mother begged Dr. Carlisle Cullen to save Edward from the Spanish influenza. This is the story of why; it is her story. We see Edward's final days as a human being, even as we are transported to Elizabeth's adolescence. It is technically historical fiction, but I didn't do a whole lot of research-sorry in advance for any anachronisms. History isn't really the point here.
1. Chapter 1

It was spring in Chicago; early May, and the sky was a crisp blue bowl above the city's ragged skyline. A relatively fresh breeze was blowing down the streets, and I watched it ruffle the petals of the flowers in my window boxes. The sun shone, clear and vivid, striking Edward's thick bronze hair and setting it on fire with a million different hues. The tiniest of smiles found its way onto my lips as I watched my son stride up the walk to our front door. Despite the present circumstances, I still took immense pleasure in seeing my own features reflected in him.

I went and opened the door for him. Edward ducked in—he was already getting too tall for the small doorway—and bent to kiss my cheek.

"How is he?" I asked as he shrugged out of his long brown overcoat and hung it on a nearby peg. Edward ran a hand through his hair and gazed at me with his eyes—the same shade of leafy green that mine were.

"I didn't notice any difference from yesterday," he responded heavily. "No better, it seems, and no worse."

"Ah," I sighed. "Is he getting enough to eat? And some sunshine, at least?"

"He eats whatever they give him at the hospital, Mother, in addition to the lunch you pack for him every day." Edward managed to smile at me warmly. "I think he is as comfortable as he could possibly be, given the situation."

I sighed again. I had to wait and hear these daily reports from Edward, all the while building up a wall of fragile hope that inevitably cracked and warped. My son had forbidden me from going to visit my ill husband and had taken it upon himself to walk the six blocks from our home to the hospital every day to visit his father. I can't say he had done this in a momentary fit of chivalry, for Edward's character was simply selfless by nature. He was fiercely protective. And yet, I worried all the more. I loved him desperately.

"You wore a mask, didn't you, Edward?" I asked him, ushering him over to our small parlor and making him sit down, though he wasn't winded in the slightest.

Edward held my eyes for a moment. "Yes, Mother. Of course." The planes of his features belied the doubt he kept out of his voice. For how could a flimsy paper mask really stop the Spanish influenza, the curse of our city, the reason the streets were so barren despite the loveliness of spring? I was out of my mind with worry for both of the men in my life, and I could scarcely believe that my son exposed himself to the horrid disease on a regular basis. But he was seventeen now, and a man in his own right. I didn't feel I could stop him.

The two of us sat in silence for a few minutes. I studied Edward, thinking that only my son could make my heart glow even while it was weighed down with the sadness of my husband's illness. Edward thumbed the tag on the inside of his cap, sitting with his broad shoulders hunched over long legs; his brow was furrowed over his eyes. Lines of strain that didn't belong there played around the edges of his mouth.

"Edward," I said suddenly, standing up from my place in an armchair. My pale blue skirt rustled. "Let's you and I do something with ourselves. We cannot make Father better sitting around moping."

Edward stared up at me. He hadn't risen, but he didn't need to crane his neck far. I saw him fit a smile onto his face, for me. "And what would you suggest?"

"I don't know. Anything. Anything to get our minds off this horrible plague and this horrible war."

Edward abruptly directed his eyes to the floor. His hands went still. "Do you really believe it will all go away," he murmured, "if we just don't think about it?"

I folded my arms across my chest. "I believe that thinking about it will do no more good than not, so we might as well try to carry on somewhat."

He was trying so hard to mask the pain in his eyes. I could see it play across his face.

I had to be strong, for him. Man in his own right or not, he was watching his father die.

And yes, he was dying. That much I knew. The influenza left very few victims, and certainly none of them were middle-aged with a history of poor health. Edward Senior would be leaving us, leaving me. I had reconciled myself to that fact during the awful night when Edward first took him, hacking and trembling, to the hospital. I hadn't slept. I hadn't thought. I simply had stood by the window and waited for my son to come home.

"Cookies," I said suddenly, ruffling Edward's hair with one hand. "Let's make cookies. I have flour and sugar enough and I think even some molasses in the cellar."

A vision of Edward, five years old and his mouth stuffed with molasses cookies, flashed before my eyes. I rubbed my hands together vigorously and moved to pin back my own thick bronze hair, twisting it into a knot at the nape of my neck.

Edward sighed but stood. "Very well. I'll go get the molasses."

We spent a relatively enjoyable hour baking together. He and I used to bake often when he was younger; he had an enormous sweet tooth but somehow stayed slender, a trait for which I would sometimes whack him semi-bitterly in the back of the head, and he would laugh and protest and eat another muffin. True to nature, his eyes brightened considerably when I brought the tray of steaming cookies from the oven. Even my son, the seventeen-year-old, I'm-old-enough-to-serve-my-country man still craved my fresh cookies.

"Wait, silly, until they've cooled," I said, waving away his eager hand.

Edward was the only child I'd been able to have. I never conceived again, and as Edward grew older, we decided to give up on the idea. Consequently, I may have spoiled my only son slightly. Still, I was proud of him. He'd had a job taking stock at the local greengrocer's for three summers now and was saving to buy an automobile. Girls fell over themselves trying to win his attention—and I firmly believed I was not simply a biased mother in believing he was strikingly handsome—but he paid them no heed.

The wretched war and all its "glory" seemed a better prize.

I shook my head to rid it of the thought as Edward plucked three cookies from the tray and swallowed them all in six bites. He grinned at me around a mouthful, and I swatted at him with my wadded-up apron. "Go roll yourself to your room and finish your schoolwork."

He did so. I cleaned up.

I expected that, the next day, the whole routine would repeat again.

Sunday dawned chillier than usual. I made Edward take a scarf when he left for the hospital that afternoon, as the gentle wind had turned biting overnight. And then I stood at the window, my hands knotted together, and watched his retreating back.

An hour later he returned. I had moved to the armchair again and was attempting to crochet a presentable tea cozy, but it had turned into a lumpy mess. I had never been much good at handicrafts.

The wind swirled in as Edward opened the door. One look at his face and I was up and beside him in an instant. I pressed my hands into his.

"What's happened?"

Edward's vibrant green eyes were dull, his face pale and haggard. I reached up and ran a trembling hand down his face, cupping his jaw. "Tell me what's happened."

Two unthinkable possibilities tangled themselves into a white-hot knot in my heart: one, my husband had worsened. Two, Edward himself was feeling ill. I simply could not process either.

"Father is dead," Edward said dully, in such a low voice I could barely hear him. "He passed on this morning, they told me."

I stared at my son. My husband of twenty years, taken from me in the brief span of a week…all the preparation I thought I had done was wiped from me. I only stood there, one hand at my side, one hand on Edward's face. Edward couldn't look at me.

And then a terrible, wretched sob shuddered its way up my body, and I gasped. The shock was too much. My breath became ragged. I sobbed again; tears began to scald their way over my cheeks. My wheezing voice broke again and again as I crumpled into my son's arms and he held me there in our open doorway. Edward was completely and utterly still. I found I couldn't look into his face, either. How can one look into the faces of one's loved ones when one has seen death? How can one even contemplate the existence of someone who means more than one's soul, while so utterly, keenly aware of their mortality?

Then the sobs began to turn into hacking, a violent fit of wheezy, paralyzing coughs so intense that I scarcely had time to breathe. I couldn't stop. I kept coughing and coughing until finally blotches of yellow began to fill my vision.

"Mother?" Edward said, concern filtering through into his deadened voice. He held me away from him and gazed at my face. His features were blurred to me. My whole frame shook and lurched with the force of my coughing.

That was the last I remembered. When I awoke again I was flat on my back, swathed in something thick and itchy and smelly, staring up at the exposed beams of an unfamiliar ceiling. My entire body ached; my throat felt as if it had been set on fire.

I blinked slowly, several times, before the memory of my husband's passing swooped in and settled on me like an unwelcome shadow, and I moaned, turning my head. Somebody's hand swept a tendril of hair from my forehead.

"I'm here," Edward said. "I'm here."

Some of my tension eased. Edward's face swam into my vision as he leaned over me, where I was, presumably, swaddled on top of a hospital cot.

I looked at him, and he looked at me, reflecting my eyes. We held each others' gazes for several long and hushed moments. I felt Edward take one of my hands under the blanket.

"I'm ill, aren't I?" I said hoarsely. It wasn't really a question.

Edward nodded, closing his beautiful eyes briefly.

"I'm in the hospital?"

He nodded again.

"And father has passed."

"…Yes." Edward's face looked sunken.

I raised my head slightly; the action was surprisingly difficult. I was lying in a sprawling ward, the occupied cots of other invalids strewn haphazardly around the floor. Medical carts stood here and there, each with an electric lantern that gave off muddy amber light. There was a strong smell of iodine in the air. I immediately felt claustrophobic, and I closed my eyes again.

"Get out of here, Edward."

Edward leaned back, shocked. "What? Mother—"

"I said leave, Edward. I will not have you lingering here with this disease about." The words seemed to sap at my strength.

"Mother, I won't leave you. I can't leave you." He was trying to be soothing, but his voice cracked.

"You certainly can. You can not become ill, Edward. Do this for me. Please spare yourself."

"I can't leave you," he repeated. His face seemed set.

That is what he said. What I heard was, "You can't leave me."

And I couldn't. I couldn't bear to leave him or have him leave me, but I had to save him from this. I wouldn't have him risking his health to watch over me.

"There are doctors here, Edward. I'll be fine. Please, go home and take care of yourself." I raised a hand to my brow and found it heavy with perspiration; I felt as if I had been trampled by a bull. How quickly the influenza struck!

Edward's brow was creased with worry; he was stroking my forearm.

"You will have to sleep sometime, Edward. Your bed is at home and it most certainly will never be here," I said, as sternly as I could manage.

A small, crooked smile lifted his mouth. "You are still trying to be authoritative."

"'Trying', sir? I am your mother and—" but something caught in my throat and I began coughing again, and my body quivered violently. The rusty frame of the cot squeaked, and I suddenly found myself morbidly wondering who had recently vacated it.

Edward had stood up and was looking around frantically. I stared wildly up at him. I couldn't believe I was doing this to my beloved, my only son. His father had just died and now his mother was ill, and he was only seventeen and barely had a job and had dreams of his own and his own cares and worries, only one boy, just a boy whom I loved with my entire soul and for whom I wanted the best of everything and to whom I had tried so desperately to give it.

And even though he might suffer should I die, perhaps for a year or so, I especially could not let him throw his life away linger with me in this godforsaken place. My own death paled in comparison with even the concept of his.

"Edward," I said, rasping, between coughs. He ignored me.

"Doctor?" he called. "Doctor!"

Somebody answered his call, it seemed, almost instantly. A strangely peaceful voice spoke from the foot of my cot, where I could not work up the strength to raise my head and look. It was a beautiful voice. Velvet.

"Yes?"

"Doctor, some of that serum? The cough-quieting serum?" Edward asked the man in a tense voice.

"Certainly," the man responded. "Give me just a moment."

I continued in my brave and valiant effort not to hack up a lung.

Then, the doctor had returned.

"Thank you so much, doctor…?" Edward trailed off. I smiled grimly to myself. Still so polite.

"Cullen, young man. My name is doctor Carlisle Cullen."

And then the man walked into my field of vision. I turned my head to look up at him, still shaking.

And then I froze. Everything seemed to freeze, to simply halt; time itself stopped its endless revolution and seemed to frame the man's face, the face of doctor Carlisle Cullen. My coughing ceased. I couldn't speak. I couldn't breathe. I could only stare at him.

Doctor Carlisle Cullen was ethereally beautiful: pale, flawless skin that seemed to glow of its own accord; sleek, blond, carefully combed hair, sculpted features, like a priceless carving. His eyes were the deepest shade of gold imaginable, set in a kind face and crinkled at the corners. They burned into me. And my entire body began to burn in response to that ochre gaze. The exact hue I thought I would never lay eyes on again; the same heartbreaking beauty; the same sense of calm and balance; the same pallor and dark purple smudges under the eyes.

The same qualities. The same nature. The same. My breath caught; my heart accelerated. I thought I would never meet another one.

It can't be, I thought. It can't be. I kept repeating the phrase to myself.

Dr. Cullen advanced with a glass cup of something thick and orange. "Drink this, please, Mrs. Masen." He offered it to me, and, as I took it, he reached behind the head of the bed and cranked something; the back rose up and I was shifted into a sitting position.

I couldn't stop staring at him. My mind seemed to have exploded into a whirlwind of sensations, all arising so rapidly and so strongly that I was utterly overwhelmed. I held the little glass limply.

Dr. Cullen looked at me with concern; I was vaguely aware that Edward had come up on my other side and had laid a hand on my forearm.

"Drink it, please, Mother. It will calm the cough."

Dr. Cullen pushed back a sleeve and lifted a perfect white hand-I had known it would be both those things. He smiled at me; it was an equally perfect smile. "You're feverish, so my hand will feel quite cold to you." And he laid that hand on my forehead, very gently. He needn't have said anything. I knew precisely how it would feel. And I closed my eyes to welcome it.

His icy touch released another flurry of memories in my mind. I savored the feeling of his skin, letting it drown me. So familiar. So evocative. So…terrifying.

I opened my eyes again and stared at this man, this doctor. I knew it. I knew it all, my entire being knew it like it knew the imprint of my soul, and recognized it and exalted in its presence. I would know it if I were blind and deaf, deprived of all senses. It was unmistakable. And I had never, ever thought I would encounter it again. That part of my life had ended.

But a vampire had found me again.

I closed my eyes once more.

The summer of 1899 found me in a place I had no desire to be: the countryside of rural South Carolina. The getaway—for my health, I was told—was my father's plan to "cure" me of my strange "wanderlust." He was convinced that the departure of both my older sisters, Marisol and Clare—the former to a marriage, the latter to etiquette school—had sent me into a horrible kind of spiraling depression, and that my weak feminine mind could do nothing but try to calm my anxiety by staying constantly on the move.

I must try to explain myself, here. The "wanderlust" my father descried in me was simply my own burgeoning curiosity; I was seventeen and I was just coming to realize how marvelous the city of Charleston really was, and I felt an insatiable drive to make myself familiar with it. It was desperate, almost. I think Charleston may have become that source of stability we all need in adolescence; I cleaved to my city and all it had to offer. When I think of it, I can almost taste the warm, salty air flavored with ocean and hear the palms rustling in the wind. I can feel the smooth, pale paving stones under the soles of my feet, and feel the pounding of the sea's waves in my bones, like a second pulse. I can hear the clatter of people in the city squares and streets, peddlers and storekeepers and people passing to and fro.

A merchant, my father himself had fallen in love with the port his sailors called home, and had settled there to run his business. His family enjoyed it well enough. But that summer, when I began to crave the sensations of freedom, my father and mother decided it was time to retreat to the country for a season and allow their youngest daughter to breathe in the pure, innocent air.

Or something along those lines. At any rate, I ended up staring morosely out the window of my family's automobile, one of the few in Charleston and certainly the only one to ever brave the rutted, treacherous country backroads. It was a ridiculous rattletrap of quivering machinery and glossy black paint, and my father was exceedingly vain of it. I sat alone in the rear seat next to our trunks, my behind enduring abuse the likes of which it had never encountered, while it thundered and hissed along.

"The cottage, I am told, is absolutely lovely," my father was saying of the dwelling he had borrowed from a colleague for the length of the venture. "Quite quaint."

He was prattling on again and I didn't want to hear it. I gazed at the landscape passing bumpily by: one enormous meadow, it seemed, carpeted in long, tufted grasses the color of honey and spring leaves, punctuated by copses of tall, gnarled trees in full, rich leaf. We passed in and out of sunlight and shade, and I alternately squinted and stared, wide-eyed. It was an alien landscape to me.

I was bruised and sore by the time we arrived. "Quaint" was the appropriate word for our summer cottage: it boasted two rooms on the bottom floor and a loft sort of thing for my bedroom. It was made entirely of knotted wood stained a light amber color. The door and shutters were covered in peeling red paint, and the glass in the windows was slightly warped. But it was clean enough, and smelled of warm straw.

Up in the loft, I wasted no time in hitting my head on the low, angled ceiling; as I grumbled, I knelt next to the cot and settled my trunk at the foot. I peered out of the single window—it looked out upon an expanse of that rippling grass, which snarled and thickened into full-blown forest fifty yards or so from the side of the cottage. The sky was fleecy with clouds.

"Elizabeth!" called my father from below. "Come and help your mother in the kitchen!"

"Coming!" I responded, flipping open my trunk and rummaging for an apron; the one I brought was stained, and had a sizeable scorch march on one edge from an experiment with cooking a goose.

As I tied it on—still kneeling—I examined my reflection in the rippled glass, such as it was. My thick bronze hair was falling in waves to my collarbone; I twisted it up quickly into a knot. My pale green eyes were large and liquid, framed by wide cheekbones smattered with just a few, faded freckles. My complexion was not exactly pale, but I had never been the rosy-cheeked sort, either. I sighed at myself in the window. Resigned to a summer in the middle of nowhere. Lovely.

I descended the ladder and met my mother in the tiny kitchen area. Mrs. Sussex was a quiet, reserved woman whose primary function was to "bustle." She "bustled" everywhere, fixing and rearranging and tidying up. Now she was bustling about the cottage with plates and cloths and things, and she handed me a pile of folded linens as soon as I entered.

"Just put some of these in each room, please, Elizabeth."

So I waddled between the rooms, dispersing sheets like a less-desirable Father Christmas. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing small things like that, and I scarcely said a word, though my mind was spinning with thoughts.

For one, what was I going to do with myself all day? Did father really expect me to quell my "wanderlust" surrounded by a broad, open expanse of roam-able land? I had brought a few books from home, worn, well-loved copies, and my journal and ink—but I doubted my own capacity to engage myself in intellectual pursuit every moment of the day. Were there any other people around? I didn't remember passing very many houses, but I had seen a handful of barns.

Supper consisted of some stewed dumplings and canned, pickled cabbage. Fully trained to clean my plate, I waited until it nearly sparkled before opening my mouth.

"What are we going to eat while we're here?" I asked. There was no easy access to fresh meat or produce like in Charleston. And there was no way to keep anything here.

My father smiled at me, kindly enough. "There is a garden behind the cottage that shall produce the bulk of our vegetables. I don't know if you've seen it yet, but it boasts squash, beans, carrots, and radishes all!"

I tried my best to drum up some enthusiasm. "Sounds wonderful."

"And Mr. Pinke"—his merchant colleague and owner of the cottage—"has a couple of hired hands about the place, who tend the animals when he's not here. I believe he said those two would hunt game for us, in the woods."

I lifted my eyebrows, then glanced at my mother. She seemed unaffected by the prospect of skinning and gutting entire animals. Actually, thinking more on it, I could see my mother taking a sort of grim, quiet pleasure in doing so.

I turned back to my father. "There are animals?"

"Yes, several horses apparently, and a cow and a handful of chickens. They're all stabled and penned just a mile or so down the road."

I bit my lip and considered that. Horses were still common in Charleston, but I was a poor rider. Maybe I would just avoid the stables for the duration of the summer.

As mother and I were cleaning up dinner, there came a series of quick, polite raps on the door that opened into our combined eating-sitting area. I glanced out of the window before going to open it, but the sun had set and I could only make out two silhouettes there in the darkness. An odd, sudden chill ran lightly down my spine, an involuntary reaction, making my hand hesitate for a moment on the handle. I shook my head sharply and pulled the door open.

The first things I saw, and the strongest of my memories, were their eyes: two sets of smoldering, liquid gold irises lifted and regarded me with benign interest. They were set in the two most breathtakingly beautiful faces I had ever seen; pale, chalky skin over perfectly proportioned and striking features, dark circles under their eyes that somehow enhanced their stunning qualities. The two men were both lean but well-muscled, the contours of their arms defined by the shadows thrown against the light pouring in from the door. They stood in front of the battered cottage like two angels, inhuman in their exquisiteness. Behind me, I heard my mother gasp.

The one standing slightly in front of the other was particularly beautiful. His hair was thick and golden, but somehow gleamed copper as well. The planes of his cheekbones were perfectly symmetrical around his straight nose; his pale lips were already curving in what appeared to be an amused smile.

I had forgotten how to breathe.

"Please forgive us for disturbing you," he said. His voice seemed to shoot me into the sky; it was like a symphony. Musical.

I could only shake my head like an idiot. Who was he? Who were they? …What were they?

"N-not at all." It took a lot to make my father stutter. He approached the doorway where I still stood, stock still, my hand still on the knob. I blinked several times. "I assume you are Mr. Pinke's, ah…employees?"

"You assume correctly," the one behind said with a smile. He stepped forward slightly. This one was taller, with long, black hair he had pulled into a tail. "My name is Tobias, and this is Noah."

"I am Michael Sussex," replied my father, regaining a little of his composure. I abruptly dropped my hand from the doorknob and sucked in a breath that I hoped wasn't too loud. "This is my wife, Sara, and my youngest daughter, Elizabeth."

"How do you do." the one called Noah asked. He dipped his head toward my mother, then me, with obvious grace. Tobias did the same. I felt my cheeks redden.

"We only stopped by to make certain you were comfortable," Tobias continued. He smiled, revealing brilliantly white teeth. "And to introduce ourselves. I'm afraid you may be seeing rather more of us than you would care to during your visit to such a…remote area. Mr. Pinke has told you, I'm sure, about the arrangements?"

"Yes, yes," said my father. "You're to do the hunting, and, ah…husbandry, and such."

I found my voice again and dusted it off with this brilliant phrase: "There must be a great deal of game available here." Immediately afterward I was kicking myself internally; what could possibly have been more obvious?

"Indeed," observed Tobias, smiling again. It was kind.

"Not to worry," Noah added, and his voice made my stomach swoop a little. "We're very good hunters." And he grinned. My eyes widened slightly; I detected the faintest note of…ferocity, in that angelic voice of his.

"Will you be needing anything that my family can provide?" my father asked.

"Only your patience. It can sometimes be difficult to flush out animals with decent meat," Noah told him, his alabaster brow furrowing slightly above his mouth. It was lifted at one corner, a painfully lovely gesture. I forced my eyes away from his face and tried to keep them elsewhere, anywhere.

"We understand completely," my father mumbled. Clearly, I was not the only one caught off guard by these two breathtaking men. My mother still had not spoken.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Finally, Tobias said, "We'll be on our way, then. Thank you for your time, Mr. and Mrs. Sussex. Miss Sussex." He nodded to me. They were halfway out the door when my father hurried forward with his mouth open.

"Hold on there, Mr. Tobias, Mr. Noah. Where exactly do you sleep around here?" he inquired. That was a good question, something I had been curious about as well.

I could have sworn that the two men exchanged the briefest of amused—almost exasperated—glances. Then Noah responded, "We'll be staying in the barn for the summer."

The idea of these two exquisite individuals surrounded by the rough-hewn image of barnyards and dirty straw seemed so absurd to me that I immediately spoke. "Do you do that every summer?"

Noah smiled at me and my stupid heart fluttered, stupidly. What was the matter with me? Yes, he was beautiful, but that about summed up the whole of what I knew about him. I didn't even know how old he was, or his last name.

"No. Mr. Pinke is paying us a good deal extra to stay close to the cottage this season, for your convenience." He did not seem the least bit embittered by that fact, but for my part, I blushed scarlet at the thought that they were bedding with animals to make us more comfortable.

"Oh," was all I could manage. Stupid again.

"Goodnight to you all," said Tobias, and with that, the two turned their backs on us and strode purposefully down the worn path away from the door. Their stride was more graceful than any I had ever seen. It took a good while for their pale skin to fade completely into the darkness, and the three of us stood there for the entirety of that while, watching.

"My," said my mother, finally, moving to shut the door. "They certainly were very polite. And very handsome young men. Although I daresay that Tobias is slightly older than the other."

"Noah," I murmured. His scorching ochre eyes lingered in my visions. Mumbling a goodnight to each of my parents, I picked up my skirt in both hands and raced to and up the ladder to my tiny loft bedroom, throwing myself stomach-down on my small bed and peering out of the window. I stretched my neck trying to see if I could make out their pale forms in the distance, but there was nothing.

I sat back on my bed and brought my knees to my chest. I curled my arms about myself and stared at nothing, my mind reeling, while the light from my candle flickered over my skin.

About two things, I was absolutely certain.

One, there was something strange, something exotic and beyond pure beauty, about those two young men, Noah and Tobias.

And two, I wanted desperately to see them again.

That was how I met Noah. By complete and utter chance—in circumstances I would have gladly avoided before I set eyes on his face. It is so strange, really, how one event—one person, one action—can change one's entire perspective. We do not often run into such things; more often we try to simply accommodate, to fit them in somehow. But Noah did not fit into any of my preexisting ideas. He threw them away from the first day. And I let him.


	2. Chapter 2

Something utterly disgusting seeped into my mouth and down my throat; I instantly began coughing and gagging. It was revolting.

My blurred vision eventually straightened itself out and I found myself looking into the kind golden eyes of Dr. Cullen. I realized he was pouring that cough serum down my throat. His hands held a half-empty cup.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Masen. I know it tastes bad, but it will make your cough better," he assured me in those musical tones.

I nodded and tried weakly to sit up straighter. I reached for the cup, and rasped, "Where is Edward?" Looking around, I didn't see him anywhere near my bed.

"Your son has gone home. I insisted that he get some rest."

I closed my eyes in relief. "Thank you, doctor." He handed me the cup and, wrinkling my nose, I gulped down the rest of the serum. "Now if I could only—" I paused to cough a little—"keep him there."

"He doesn't seem to be an easily deterred fellow," Dr. Cullen said with a slight smile. He took the cup from me and set it on a nearby tray. He then picked up a stethoscope and held up the drum. "May I?"

"You may." I marveled at how well I was handling myself, considering. I felt extremely comfortable around him despite my illness—more comfortable, perhaps, than I had felt in a long time.

Dr. Cullen gently undid the top button of my blouse and, very carefully, slid the drum underneath to the skin over my heart.

Feeling the closeness of that frigid skin, I couldn't help but tremble a little.

I then thought of Edward. I hoped he was still well and had not lingered long after my last fainting spell. Seeing his wide green eyes in my mind, I moaned with anxiety. Seeing my late husband's face as well, I moaned again.

Dr. Cullen looked at me with honest sympathy as he withdrew the stethoscope. "I am sorry for your recent loss, Mrs. Masen," he said gently, looping the instrument around his neck.

"Thank you," I whispered. I was scarcely cognizant of my surroundings, with my thoughts pulling in so many directions at once, some unexpected. The only thing that stood out amidst my present situation was not even the influenza: it was Carlisle Cullen. The vampire doctor who had his eyes.

I had thought he was unique in that regard.

"How progressed is the illness, Dr. Cullen?" I said hoarsely. Focusing again on my very real, very tangible body, I felt my growing weakness like a lead weight.

Dr. Cullen pressed his lips together. "Not very. You have a slight fever and the characteristic cough. The symptoms may worsen, or they may change."

I winced. "Thank you for being honest with me, doctor."

"I could never be anything else." He sounded so sincere.

I hesitated, staring at my hands twisted in my blanketed lap. "Edward," I murmured.

"Your son is young and healthy," Dr. Cullen said immediately. "His body likely has the strength to fight the disease."

I shook my head slowly, causing loosened tendrils of hair to brush across my shoulders. "Not a chance I'm willing to take," I said. "He has to stay away from here."

Dr. Cullen sighed, placing one hand on the bedrail. "I can do very little to keep him away, Mrs. Masen. And he'll likely not listen."

"He's very stubborn," I replied with my fading voice. "Threaten him if you have to."

"I cannot keep him from you during visiting hours, Mrs. Masen. It is against the law."

I was silent.

"He loves you very much." Dr. Cullen paused. "You are fortunate, I should think, to have such a devoted person in your life."

I nodded. I now wanted him to leave me alone.

He seemed to sense this. "I'll let you get some rest, now. Goodnight, Mrs. Masen."

And he walked away, taking his pale skin and gold-black eyes and elegance with him, leaving me submerged in that sickly amber light that bathed the ward. Outside, through the windows, the streets of Chicago were dark.

My memories from the countryside are all, strangely enough, pervaded by the bright sense of sunshine. It is as if I am seeing it all again through the lens of a warm, golden liquid; but that may just be the visions of his eyes. They are, as I have said, my strongest memories, the image that conjures up the most potent emotion in me.

I managed to escape from the cottage the next morning for a little bit of exploring. I remember it was a breezy day, the sky full of racing clouds through which the sun flitted. Knee deep in meadow grasses, I poked sheepishly around the edge of the forest, trying to work up the courage to venture in. Underneath the limbs of the trees, I could see, it was a pool of cool shadows.

But I didn't want to be enveloped today. I found I rather liked the openness of the rural areas spread out at my back; the unrestrained wind tugged at my hair, fresh and sweet.

I skimmed along the line between the woods and the grasses, gradually weaving my way away from the cottage, in the general direction of where I knew the barn was, to the east.

I was thinking about Noah and Tobias.

I couldn't help but shiver the tiniest bit at the vivid memory of their exquisiteness; their beauty bordered on alien. And yet I felt irresistibly drawn in, like a moth to a flame. I wanted to surround myself with that beauty all the time, to somehow convince myself that perfection existed. It felt almost…greedy, the drive I felt to find them again and remind myself that they were real.

Had I simply imagined it? Had I simply been tired from the long journey?

I got a bit angry with myself. I was supposed to be on vacation, and here I was wasting my time dreaming about hired hands. I would probably see very little of them, and it was ridiculous to elevate them to some sort of higher state simply because they were beautiful. They were probably just as coarse as any other men their age.

Though they certainly hadn't seemed it. They had been so…elegant. Almost old-fashioned in their mannerisms.

I shook my head. I ran a hand up to my scalp and ruffled my hair a little. I decided my cot must have leaked some straw the night before; I could feel some rough pieces.

I grimaced. No matter how I tried to distract myself, those two lovely creatures penetrated my thoughts.

This is ridiculous, I thought. I will not behave like this.

Naturally, a few minutes later I found myself at the door of the barn. It was a weathered old structure, had seen several seasons of elements and was still standing proudly, although it looked a little lopsided. The enormous wooden doors were covered in the same peeling red paint that the cottage sported.

Gripping the cross-bar with both hands, I slid it sideways, wedged my fingers into the crack between the two doors, and pulled them open. A plume of dust wafted into my face, smelling of manure and animals and leather. I was greeted with a few good-natured clucks by a handful of hens strutting about.

I padded inside softly, looking around as my eyes adjusted to the dark. There were some stalls, and a hay loft high above stacked with golden bundles. The floor was hard-packed dirt.

A soft whickering from one side distracted me, and I stepped tentatively toward the noise. Peering into a stall, I met a horse's dark, gentle gaze. The animal's hide was a pure dove gray; it gleamed. Obviously well cared for.

As we looked at each other, I took a careful, measured breath, not wanting to startle the creature—I did, however, startle myself. There was something else now mingling with the scents of manure and leather: a sweet, enticing aroma, so completely mouthwatering that my eyes flew wide open when it met my nose. What was that?

"That one's a mare," came a soft, musical voice.

I must have jumped a mile; my knee banged into the stall door against which I was pressed, causing the horse to stamp in alarm. I had not seen nor heard anyone else in the barn. I tried to calm my thundering heart as I turned around and met Noah's eyes.

And then promptly directed my own to the ground. I couldn't keep eye contact with him without feeling a slight dizziness in my head, he was that stunning. And so graceful and composed, I felt absurdly awkward by comparison.

"Hello," I said quietly, proud of myself for not messing up that simple word too badly.

"Hello," he replied, and his voice was kind, confident—utterly alluring. I couldn't help it; I raised my eyes to see if the smile I heard in his voice was really there. It was. It was dazzling.

"I was just…that is, I was looking around. I'm afraid I'm not very good with animals, but I thought I'd…" I trailed off lamely.

"Mischa is actually very calm. You're not likely to do anything wrong by her standards," Noah said. He somehow managed to glow even in the shade of the barn.

I chuckled, nervously. But I knew at the same time—this was what I had wanted all along. To meet one of them again. Particularly, I wanted to see Noah again.

Memory certainly had not done him justice.

"Elizabeth, am I correct?" he asked politely. Though it was mild enough, the sound of his voice speaking my name was thrilling.

"Yes," I said, trying to compose myself. I wasn't normally so shy.

"I'm Noah," he said, mistakenly thinking I needed a reminder.

"Yes, I remember," I said, trying to smile at him.

"Noah Alexander."

I blinked. "That's an unusual surname. I'm curious. Are…are you and Tobias related?" Full sentences; what ambitions I had today.

His lovely face contracted in an expression of slight confusion. "What makes you think that?"

I bit my lip. "You two seem to share certain…qualities."

For a brief moment he seemed to be fighting a smile; then, he smoothed his features. "We aren't related. But we have been in each other's company for quite some time now." He walked slowly over to stand next to me against the stall door, and held a perfectly white hand out to the horse, Mischa. The mare blinked and lifted one hoof, making as if to step forward, but suddenly her nostrils flared and she whinnied, turning completely around and retreating to the back of the stall. Her eyes rolled slightly in their sockets.

I watched this, baffled. Noah seemed completely at ease around animals. However, I wanted to continue my meager attempts at conversation, and so I let the odd behaviors of animals fall from my mind.

"Do the two of you travel a lot?" I asked Noah, who had let his hand drop, his features still smooth as glass.

"Generally, yes. We've spent the past three summers working for Frederick Pinke, maintaining his land and animals for him while he does business in the city. But for the rest of the year, Tobias and I tend to…roam." He withdrew his hand from the stall and ran it through his hair. "Picking up odd jobs here and there."

"You must like this one, if you keep coming back," I answered, genuinely curious now.

"It's very peaceful," he said, nodding. "Hardly anyone lives nearby, and those who do tend to retreat to the coast during the hottest months."

"Have you ever been to Charleston?" I asked, thinking of my beloved port city, the crash of the waves, how beautiful he would look standing windswept on a wharf…

Noah smiled at me, and once again his smoldering golden eyes caught me completely off guard. I sucked in what I hoped was a silent breath. "Yes. Many times," he said. "You came from there, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"How long will you be here?"

"One and a half months, I think. My father thinks that I need to breathe in as much country air as possible."

Noah laughed, a melodious sound. "Growing up too fast for him, are you?"

I flushed a little. "I suppose so."

His eyes took on a curious gleam. "How old are you, Miss Sussex?"

My brow furrowed. "I'm seventeen." I was annoyed that he had called me "Miss Sussex"—I would have far preferred my first name. "And you, Mr. Alexander?"

Noah grinned in answer. "Eighteen."

"Will I really see very little of you during the entire summer?" The words were

out of my mouth before my brain had approved of them. I immediately snapped my jaw shut and reprimanded myself while my face began to burn. Ugh. It sounded so very…desperate. How could I sound—how could I feel—that way?

I tried to explain, to myself and to him. "Wh—what I meant was, it didn't seem so difficult to find you just now. I just walked in here." I gestured to the barn. Actually, I was almost surprised to find it was still there. My conversation with Noah had seemed so electrified that we could have been standing in a tempest and I wouldn't have noticed.

The flash of his teeth and eyes made my heart literally skip a beat. "I suppose you'll see as much of me as you want to," he said rather softly. "Except when we're hunting." He lifted his impossibly long lashes to gaze at me.

I nodded; I could live with that. And if I wanted to see him every day, I just had to work up the spine to wander away from the cottage as much as possible.

He must have some idea of how utterly charming he was. Charming—alluring, more like.

At that moment, two things happened. First, the sunlight that had been streaming outside open doors vanished as the sun was smothered in clouds. Then, a figure appeared in the now shadowy doorway and advanced into the dark barn. It was Tobias, his pale skin seeming to glow against his dark hair. He was speaking rapidly.

"Noah, there is a herd of deer not far off in the woods and we should get there immediately." He paused and looked at me, and allowed a smile onto his face. "For Miss Sussex's dinner this evening," he added, in a tone that seemed less urgent than his previous one.

I gave a faltering smile. "I hope my mother is up to the task of skinning and gutting a whole deer. I certainly would be of no help."

"It's no matter, Miss Sussex, we will do that for your family," Noah said, his voice much more formal and restrained than it had been moments before.

"Oh." I found myself looking at the ground again. "Thank you."

"It was a pleasure to talk with you again," he said evenly. "Good afternoon, Tobias. Shall we?"

And, with polite nods to me, the two of them paced swiftly, gracefully from the barn and headed toward the woods. I padded after and stuck my head out of the doorframe, watching. Above, I noticed, the sky had become quite cloudy indeed.

Ducking back inside, I rested against Mischa's stall door once more. The mare had advanced again and sniffed amiably at my hair, perfectly at ease.

I was still watching the empty barn door, wishing my encounter with Noah hadn't ended quite so abruptly.

That night I dreamed of Charleston, but the fleeting images and sensations were not as pleasant as I would have liked them to be. As I wandered the broad, cobbled streets, I had the vague notion that I was searching for something I couldn't find. And I never properly traveled from one place to place; I just seemed to end up on father's wharf, or within the old slave market, or high in the bell tower of the cathedral, frantically looking. The weather was the only thing that remained consistent—the sky was an ominous, roiling swath of charcoal-colored clouds, oppressive throughout my un-sequenced dreams.

My beautiful city was empty; it did not have what I was looking for.

When I woke, it was not the clichéd, sudden gasping, but a gradual, sickly awareness of the pressure of the pillow against my cheek and of my hair, plastered across my sweaty face. I groaned aloud when I was finally fully released from my dreams, and opened aching eyes to the window next to my bed. In the world of reality, the clouds had moved on; it was a clear night, the sky sprinkled with thousands and thousands of stars. I took a couple deep breaths, peeling the strands of hair from my face, as I continued to gaze at the nighttime sky.

Noah was right. I could sense a peace in this place.

During the daytime, the hospital was not quite so macabre. Sunshine helped. The bustling of the nurses helped. Edward's presence, much as I loathed to admit it, helped.

"Good morning, mother." He was there when I woke again from my fevered haze. Of course. Edward tenderly stroked my palm and met my eyes with his, which, to my dismay, were decorated with the smudges of sleeplessness.

A stab of physical pain, unrelated to the damned influenza, wrenched me. Edward, alone at home, fatherless, with an invalid mother…it was too much for a single young man. And yet he came to me faithfully.

Did I really deserve such a son?

"Good morning," I replied, and, happily, my voice was not quite so weak as it had seemed the previous night. "Making your morning rounds, Dr. Masen?"

He managed to smile at that. "My patients' welfare is top priority. How are you feeling, Mrs. Masen?" He let his voice drop to one of concern as he knitted his brows over his eyes.

I weighed my options and decided to be gently honest. "Like I have the Spanish influenza. But not horrible. Functional, as you see."

"Yes," he murmured. And then, even more softly, "I can't believe this happened."

"It's perfectly believable, Edward." I watched his morose expression carefully. "Now, I recognize that look. Don't you start to blame yourself for this."

"I was supposed to be keeping you safe by keeping you from the hospital. Instead I brought the damned thing home," he mumbled. "I should be in your place."

"Edward!" I said harshly, not caring who heard me. "Don't be ridiculous. I could have contracted the virus anywhere, from anyone. And I certainly pray to God that He let the virus take me a hundred times before it even touches you." I tried to sit up a little, to emphasize my words, but my muscles felt like gelatin. I settled for glaring.

Immediately Edward looked distressed. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be making you comfort me. That isn't why I came here." And he looked so upset that I couldn't help but reach out a hand to cup his jaw, as I always did. He closed his eyes briefly, and then opened them to reveal a fierce gleam.

"I'll get some more medicine for you."

"Edward, I'm sure the staff is very busy—"

"They know me here."

And he was off. Ten minutes later he returned with a squat, red-haired man who was most certainly not Dr. Cullen, who insisted I drink another cup of that abominable cough serum, and then presented Edward with a jug of water so immense it could have contained a small person.

"She needs plenty of fluids, so make sure this stays by her bed at all times. We've constructed this apparatus to help her drink regularly." The squat doctor held out what was essentially a very long glass straw. "The water has been boiled to purification, and we've mixed in herbal supplements and powders for calcium and protein." These last two terms were only vaguely familiar to me; I recalled a report about nutrition I had seen in the last few weeks that mentioned some breakthroughs about "elements of the body" or some such nonsense.

Edward saw my dubious look as soon as the doctor had walked away.

"The man knows what he's doing, I'm sure, mother," he said sternly as he heaved the enormous jug to the side of my bed and gingerly stuck in the long glass tube. "Better than we do, at any rate. Listen to him."

I scoffed. "All that babbling about 'sophisticated technological devices,'" I muttered as I fingered the end of the giant straw. "Where is Dr. Cullen?"

Edward replied quietly, "Dr. Cullen only works the night shift."

I blinked, and then I scolded myself for being so dense. Of course he wouldn't come to the hospital during the day. To Edward, I said, "I guess even he has to sleep occasionally."

Edward sat on my bed again, against my knees, and ran both hands through his tousled hair. "They say he's the best there is. Perhaps even in all of Chicago. Everybody knows of him."

I was rather disturbed at how intimate Edward seemed to be with the hospital rumor mill—clearly, he was becoming far too familiar with these settings.

"Edward," I said sternly. "I want you to stop coming here to see me." The words hurt to say, but I could think of nothing else to do to keep him safe.

My son smiled wanly at me. "You don't really mean that."

"But I do," I said, fixing him with what I hoped was a reproachful look. "I will not have you exposing yourself to this virus. What you're doing is completely reckless and I insist that, as a grown man now, you take your own health more seriously. You're not in—" I had meant to say "invincible," but a cough worked its slimy way into my chest. I began to hack and tremble, making the bed frame shudder.

Edward was by my head in an instant. Sliding one hand behind my back, he propped me up slightly and pressed a thick fold of linen to my mouth as I coughed.

"Ah, mother," he murmured, and it sounded so sad that my eyes began to scald and tears dripped and ran and mingled with the sweat on my face. It felt as if my very soul were ill, too.

When the coughs finally subsided, I flopped back against the bed, feeling drained and exhausted, physically and emotionally.

"Edward," I said throatily. "Please. Don't do this. It's not worth it." I wiped away my tears with clammy fingers.

He was staring at the wad of linen in his hands, his posture rigid, his profile hard like granite.

The cloth was stained bright red.

I couldn't help it: a quivering sigh of fear fell from my lips.


	3. Chapter 3

"It's starting to rain," I said to my companion, down by my knees.

He looked up at the sky, examining the clouds, and a few drops splattered across his marble features. "So it is." He looked as if the clouds had done him a personal affront; I laughed a little at that.

"What's funny?" Noah asked, looking up at me, then.

"You look so insulted by the weather."

"Yes, well, if it had simply remained cloudy, without the wet, everything would have been much better. We wouldn't have to call off our lesson, for one thing."

I smiled down at him. "I don't really mind. And I don't think Mischa does either; she could probably use a good rinse." I squeezed the mare's gray sides with my knees, and she immediately set into a gentle trot. Noah held the long leather reins, so we simply went in a wide circle around him, wearing a path in the soft green grass of the field. Noah seemed to resign himself to his pupil's endless enthusiasm; he pretended to sigh wearily as he continued to turn on his heels, but I saw the gleam of good humor in his eyes, and I chuckled again. He really was a tireless teacher.

For the past week and a half, I had made it my business to seek out horseback-riding lessons from a certain employee of Mr. Pinke's, who was, after all, there for my family's "convenience." They had been proceeding well enough.

The first forty-eight hours after I talked with Noah in the barn were dominated by a fierce denial on my part. It was quite pathetic, actually. I told myself that I loitered shamelessly by the barn to familiarize myself with the animals; I pretended my frequent walks along the old dirt road were for the sake of "fresh air;" I insisted that I constantly lingered by the doors and windows because the cottage felt small and cramped. But the truth was that I wanted to run into Noah again, I wanted to wander into his midst, I wanted to make sure that my eyes missed no moment of him should he come near the cottage. When it came right down to it, I simply couldn't fabricate logical excuses for my behavior for very long without driving myself, and my family, insane.

"Elizabeth," said my mother sharply one evening. "For goodness' sake, come away from that window. The view hasn't changed from what it was this morning. Come and help me wash these things."

She was sitting bent over a wash basin, her hands plunged to the elbows in soapy fluff. It had been an odd adjustment for her, to be reduced to such crude implements for housework. But she endured, I think, for my father's sake; she did love him, very much.

I turned away, disappointed, from the front window and from my pretense of watching the sun set. I hadn't managed to see him, or Tobias for that matter, once during the entire day, and I somehow felt wearier for it.

Immediately I began to scold myself for thinking my emotional state could really be affected by a single person with whom I was scarcely acquainted. It makes no sense, I said to myself, over and over. Stop dwelling on it. Stop letting this happen and get control of yourself.

But those very commands, those which I gave to myself, were evidence that something was happening, something that was very much beyond my control indeed. If…Noah really had no effect on me, I wouldn't have to argue with myself over whether or not he did.

All in all, it seemed my father's decision to temporarily relocate me to the country was having the opposite effect as was intended. During those forty-eight hours, I was morose, stony, and generally horrible company.

That night, alone in bed, I made a decision; a decision which had, for all intents and purposes, already been made somewhere in my heart. Perhaps, I allowed myself, this goes beyond fascination. Perhaps I should give myself a chance to…explore. To wander where this path leads me. Wouldn't father be proud.

The next morning was fortunate. Noah stopped by to deliver two pheasants he and Tobias had flushed out for us, and, frustrated by his polite courtesy, I seized my opportunity. I asked him if he would be willing to teach me how to ride a horse.

His initial response was not an encouraging one. He looked hesitant; actually, his face seemed to glaze over somewhat, as if he were afraid his expression might offend me.

"That sounds like a wonderful idea, Elizabeth," remarked my father. Luckily, he was supporting me. "What do you say, Mr. Alexander? There may be a bonus in it for you."

Noah still looked highly reluctant. "I am afraid it may detract from my duties to Mr. Pinke and to you, Mr. Sussex. As much as I would enjoy teaching Miss Sussex." He smiled at me then, but it seemed forced.

"You need not tend to the garden or to the cottage yard, Mr. Alexander—my wife and I are not above doing such things. Will that provide you with enough time to tutor my daughter?"

My spirits soared high. Noah eventually agreed, but with one condition: he held the right to refuse a lesson at any time.

I accepted, triumphant, interaction with the strange, beautiful creature of my daydreams now guaranteed.

Or so I thought. At first, Noah was markedly unpredictable about when he allowed a lesson with me. Sometimes he would decline—politely, and with the utmost regret, of course—for no particular reason; on those days, he was always very busy in the barn, or he and Tobias needed to run an errand somewhere, sometime later in the day. Others, I simply couldn't find him; either he alone or he and Tobias both would be missing from the premises for the entire day.

But sometimes conditions were just right, it seemed, and he instructed me about saddles and tack and how to mount and lead a horse. At first Mischa seemed distressed when he led her out of the stall; she neighed and stamped and pulled. But eventually she acquiesced to keeping at least a meter's worth of distance between herself and Noah at all times. With me, however, she was remarkably friendly, and I grew quite attached to her.

Noah was a wonderful teacher; accessible, patient, and knowledgeable in, I suspected, many areas beyond horses, though he never let on directly. I tried my best to be an attentive student—and I did genuinely learn to enjoy riding a horse—but I wasn't helped by the fact that any prolonged eye contact with my teacher made my head spin dizzily.

We grew closer, or I hoped we were. He had such a tentativeness about him sometimes, which clashed with his natural, smooth grace, and I wondered if perhaps he was more uncomfortable with me than he let on. I couldn't imagine why; he had absolutely no reason to feel…insecure, inhumanly perfect as he was, around me, just an average, awkward specimen of young womanhood. Noah was poised beyond all capability. He was gracious, confident, and kind. He was handsome and patient. He was…struggling.

I never consciously came to the conclusion that my new companion was fighting a battle inside himself; I just gradually began to adjust my words and mannerisms to something that I must have understood with a sense I couldn't comprehend. When that infinitesimal trace of pain crossed his features, I immediately changed the subject, changed the direction, altered my suggestion to something that would allow him to relax back into his usual calm demeanor. When he hesitated in answering a question, I retracted it. When his muscles tensed or his brow furrowed in the slightest, I distracted him with a random remark or an innocent query. When I saw him swallow compulsively—he tried to be subtle about it—I immediately flickered my eyes to something else, anything else, so I wouldn't be an obvious witness and make him self-conscious. I did everything I could think of without outright asking him what he was struggling with. I wouldn't have bothered asking him if he was alright; that was easily answered in the negative by that unconscious sense. I just knew. But I didn't know what, and though I wanted desperately to ask and to find out, to do my best to help him, something held me back.

It might have been unhealthy, it might have been rationally unjustifiable, it might have been unasked for and unreciprocated, but I came to care for Noah. His pain was my pain; I tried so hard to share his mysterious burden, something which he never knowingly divided with me. I made myself miserable doing it, too, keeping myself awake at night running back my tiny memories and glimpses of his internal battle, worrying about him. Wanting to help; feeling helpless. I also wanted so badly to be able to dwell on the happier moments: the smiles, the shared laughter, the smoldering glances—all of which, I thought, were equally as genuine—but for some unfathomable reason, I lingered on the unpleasantness.

Because I cared for him. Because it was impossible for me to feel happy while he was not.

I was a stupid, presumptuous girl, to both assume that Noah was hurting and that I could somehow make it better for him. To make so much of little observations, magnified by the strength of my senses whenever I was around him and his glorious, pale beauty and presence. To put such unwavering trust in my intuition.

After all, if my intuition did what it was supposed to do, I would have been keeping myself as far away from his presence as possible.

There simply must have been something wrong with my brain.

So it was that I kept one eye trained on my stunning riding tutor as Mischa and I trotted in deft circles about him. I was still learning to reconcile the natural rhythms of my body with the cadence of the mare's jarring movements, so I was jostled around somewhat on her back. Fortunately, I was learning—slowly—to accept the reality that I would never, ever feel graceful around Noah, and fretting about it would do absolutely no good. I grimaced as I bumped up and down, but no blush scalded to my cheeks.

Noah was smiling slightly at me now, dazzlingly; he truly was an incredible person, even beyond the unnatural beauty. I had gathered that much.

But there was the nagging problem of the hesitation, the pain I detected in his mien. It did not belong.

It did not belong, just like I felt, like I knew, that I didn't belong—couldn't possibly merit a place in his world. He was too wonderful. Perhaps he really was an angel, like I had thought the first night I met him.

"Noah," I called, a little more awkwardly than before. "We don't really have to keep going. We can stop. It might start to rain harder."

I pulled gently on the reins to slow Mischa to a stop. I leapt down clumsily and staggered a little, and in what seemed like an instant he was there beside me, one hand closed around my arm, the other resting feather-light against my back. Fizzing tingles shot down my spine and crackled through me; the breath left my body, and I looked hesitantly up into his eyes and gulped.

At the same moment, he, too, performed that compulsive swallow I had seen several times before. I saw his pale white throat, inches from my face, contract. Immediately I sought to direct my gaze elsewhere, but something caught my eye first. His eyes—they were not quite so golden as I had originally thought. In fact, they were an odd shade I never remembered seeing before: blackness crept in from the outer edges of his irises, leaving only a ring of faded ochre around his pupils. I squinted as I noticed it, confused. I had distinct memories of his eyes like liquid gold. I had never seen any black.

But that moment when our eyes were locked lasted less than a second. In a moment he had me righted on my feet again, released his hold on my arm, and had retreated a foot away.

I looked at him, about to speak, when I realized my arm was burning. The place where his hand and been against my skin was literally, physically tingling, not just from the phantasms of my mind. It felt as if something extremely hot had recently been in contact with my flesh.

Or something extremely cold.

I must have glanced down at my arm in surprised confusion, for Noah immediately spoke up.

"Forgive me if I acted improperly, Miss Sussex," he said in his most courteous tone, his "Miss Sussex" tone. "I was afraid you would stumble into the mud that's forming." He carefully kept his eyes away from me; he gazed steadily into the distance.

My irritation at this tone momentarily banished all thoughts of blackened irises and tingling skin. I did not want to be just another charge to him, just another thing done for the salary.

And I knew that, somewhere, he felt a greater connection to me than that of obligation. I knew because he would occasionally slip and call me Elizabeth. I remembered each time clearly. Because I loved hearing my name in his voice, and because his expression always briefly—fleetingly—disintegrated into that image of pain after every time my name slipped from his lips.

So it was painful for me, too. Exhilarating, but painful. And I became a glutton for punishment.

Perhaps it was the strengthening rain, acting as a sort of veil between us, that emboldened me. Perhaps it was my annoyance at hearing "Miss Sussex" again. Whatever the cause, I stepped closer to him, closing his retreat.

"You didn't act improperly," I said, and absolutely none of my annoyance came through with my voice. In fact, it cracked slightly as I looked up into his face. "Thank you. Noah." Rain fell around us in whispering sheets, stirring up mud puddles.

Did I imagine the momentary glint of softness in his eyes? Did I dream the relaxing of his facial muscles into something like affection? If they were there, they were gone and instantly masked with a controlled expression.

"You're welcome…Elizabeth." His voice was more tender, but I could still sense how he was holding himself away from me.

Should I press my luck? I wondered. Should I lean closer? There was no knowing how long my sudden spate of confidence would last. I settled for smiling at him through the rain.

He smiled back at me, but the perfectly cool composure of his face was utterly disheartening. His wet, gold hair had somehow managed to sculpt itself into attractiveness, and I felt my resolve wavering as I again took in how heartbreakingly beautiful he was. I tried very hard not to notice how his soaking clothes clung to his muscular frame.

Stupid, stupid girl.

"Let's take Mischa in, shall we?" he said, kindly, and I could only nod, eyes everywhere but his face, everywhere but his gold-black eyes.

Dr. Cullen was there when I crawled groggily into consciousness. That meant it was night. Which probably meant that Edward was not present.

Excitement and disappointment immediately conflicted. I would have moaned, but the movement of air through my throat was extraordinarily painful. I settled for squeezing handfuls of the rough blanket around my hips and looking around wildly. I was burning from fever; my eyes rolled dizzily in my head.

Dr. Cullen's chill hand came to rest gently on my forehead. I immediately let out a soundless sigh—painful but inevitable—and relaxed a little.

"Your fever is high, but not enough to render you totally incoherent," he said smoothly, kindly—truthfully. "I am going to listen to your heart again."

The icy hands reached for my skin and held the drum of the instrument there again, and my vampire physician listened to whatever disjointed rhythm my heart played for him. I searched for his eyes, the golden eyes that were such a contradiction. They were, paradoxically, the first and last aspect I would have expected to see in him.

They were unfathomable for me.

I croaked, "How many days have I been here?" It burned to say; my throat felt as if it had been scoured with acid.

Dr. Cullen ran a hand through his glossy blond hair. "Seven."

"And how many do I have left?"

He sighed. "I really cannot say."

I glared at him as fiercely as I could.

"No, I am being honest. There is no way to predict. Some people have lasted as long as two months. Others, less than three days." He grimaced, and I could tell he regretted telling me these things.

For a split second, I considered telling Dr. Carlisle Cullen that I knew his secret. I considered telling him that I knew what he was, that I recognized the traits of his kind and I knew his abilities, and that I had known one of them, once. I thought perhaps it would be a relief, to divulge to someone as sincerely kind and trustworthy as this man—this vampire—all the memories and thoughts and questions that I had. To stop feeling like a pariah within myself, and share my closed-away world.

But I did not. I could not bring myself to breach the expanse of still, undisturbed water between us. I knew that the moment I tested that water, the ripples would be uncontrollable, and the serenity I found reflected in its glassy surface would be no more. I wanted to preserve that innocence, to feel that peace again. I had to be, for the time being, comfortable in my hidden knowledge, knowing that I could maintain my own sanity meanwhile. I wanted more to make it last.

"Should I really drink this…concoction, Dr. Cullen?" I asked instead, gesturing weakly at the glass straw protruding from the jug of water. Even that small movement seemed to sap at my life force.

Dr. Cullen's eyebrows contracted. "If you wish. I have not ventured into that field myself, so I cannot know the benefits—but certainly it cannot hurt to try?" He smiled. I smiled in return.

"I trust you," I whispered hoarsely.

He was silent, but not broodingly so. Perhaps there was really no response.

"Your hand feels good on my brow."

A second's silence. Then, he lifted his pale hand, a little tentatively at first, and smoothed it over my forehead again. The delicious coolness seeped through my skin and into my roiling mind.

I'm not sure how long we sat there.

"Doesn't the bit hurt the horse? To always have that piece of metal in its mouth?"

The two of us were standing next to Mischa's stall in the barn, putting away tack from a lesson.

"They don't wear it when they need to use their mouths at all—like when they're trying to eat. It may be a little uncomfortable, but then, it's certainly no more uncomfortable than having a two-hundred pound burden on one's back." Noah smiled at me then, and my heart flew, as it always did, no matter how accustomed I thought I was getting.

Still, my own mouth twitched in response. "You make me feel guilty for wanting to do this. Poor Mischa."

"You think she would rather pull a plow, or become hog-feed?"

I cringed. "Now you're just making me feel guilty for being human at all."

He laughed, a bright sound. "No, you should never feel guilty for being human, Elizabeth." And he stopped speaking quickly. Then, more quietly, "It's not as if you can help it."

I was looking at him, unsure of his rapid emotional shifts. It made my heart ache, the way he seemed so conflicted.

"Then again, it's not as if she can help being a horse, either," I offered, trying to decide whether to attempt some cheer, or to fall in with his serious expression. "She didn't choose to be subject to whatever we humans want to do with her. So am I still the guilty one, here?" I tried another smile.

When he looked at me again, his face seemed full of an almost ancient wisdom—of patience painfully won. I couldn't say how I gave it this description. "Ah, you are entering into realms of moral doubt and responsibility now. Can we help what we are? Can we help what we do to others?" Noah's questions hung in the air.

"Of course we can," I said. "There's no reason we can't change our behavior."

"But what if our behavior is necessary to survive? And that behavior harms others?"

"It isn't necessary for humans to hurt others to survive," I responded stoically.

"You eat meat, don't you?"

"Oh." I considered this. "But those are animals, not other humans. There is no person—no good person, anyway—who needs to hurt human beings."

Noah's body seemed to still even more completely, if that was possible. He turned his face to Mischa in her stall. "No, there is no human being like that," he said softly. He stroked the inside of one palm with his thumb. "But if there were, my question still stands. Could they help what they are?"

He was hurting again. I could see it as clearly as day. I spun desperately away from this topic, striving mentally for some way to lift his mood. I couldn't allow these mental clouds to obscure him for one moment longer, or both of us would surely suffocate.

"If humans can resist their constant urge to fornicate on the ground like dogs, then I believe in the will of anything," I said rapidly, jokingly, being purposely crude in order to stun him out of his reverie.

It worked; he turned around immediately, his eyebrows lifted high. "Miss Sussex, how perfectly inappropriate of you." But I saw his mouth twitching and I grinned, triumphant, not caring of my apparent immaturity.

"I don't know what humans you've met in your lifetime, but I can assure you, some of us are not governed by this 'constant urge to fornicate,'" he was saying, while shaking his head. "Ridiculous."

"You were laughing, Noah."

"That sort of remark befits a childish boy far more than a young woman of elegance like yourself." He had turned to hang up the tack we had been discussing previously.

That brought my chuckling up short. I felt a fiery red blush immediately plume in my cheeks. A young woman of elegance? I felt my stomach flip over and over in feverish excitement. I opened my mouth and tried to respond with some amount of dignity, though in truth my mind was glowing.

"H-hardly," I managed to stutter. Noah continued hanging up the tack on the barn walls, but he smiled as he did so.


	4. Chapter 4

My eyes would not work properly the next time I awoke. My thoughts felt disjointed and scattered, almost like physical scraps of paper inside my skull, all being tossed about in a relentless wind. I slowly became aware of my limbs again, my arms and legs like useless trunks, burdened with leaden weights, and my field of vision was blurry and unfocused. My body did not want to be awake. It wanted to shut itself down to the bare minimum again, to plunge me into deep, deep sleep, and continue in its futile bid to fight off this disease. I struggled to maintain sentience.

I had no way of knowing how much time had passed; in fact, I was scarcely aware of time at all. I was still burning with fever; my throat felt so parched that it seemed liable to crumble away.

I heard voices. Indistinct at first—I felt a vague annoyance with the strange buzzing in my ears that I couldn't dispel. But after a few moments I could make out two figures at the foot of my bed, and their voices became clearer, reached me, and I managed to sort out the meaning of their words from the windstorm in my head.

"She still has a fever," one was saying to the other. "It will probably break soon. Many patients go through several of these without any significant changes otherwise."

"You mean without dying," snapped the other. "Damn it, she is suffering. Is this virus so merciless that it doesn't even kill its victims quickly?"

"This virus is without conscience," answered the other figure, in a resolutely calm tone. "If that weren't the case, we would not be having this discussion."

"So she'll be going in and out of fever for days? Weeks?"

"I cannot say, Mr. Masen."

"Apparently, you cannot say much," fumed the one. "At least that other doctor had something to give her, something to do."

"If you would prefer treatment from Dr. Wisecollar, I can arrange for it at once."

There was a pause. "No. No, Dr. Cullen. Please… keep treating her."

"I will do everything I can."

Another hesitation. I blinked my eyes again, trying to force them to focus, but to no avail. I didn't have the strength to move or even make a sound, but only could lay limply like a rag doll.

"With this…fever. …Will I be able to…talk to her again?" The voice broke on this last phrase, and even with my numbed senses and perilously whirling consciousness, I could hear the pain there. Something in it snapped fibers in my heart.

"When it breaks, Edward, she will be aware once more," said the other, obviously trying to be soothing.

"Edward." My lips moved and my throat contracted, but I emitted not a single sound.

He had to stay away.

"You're certain that your father and mother won't mind?" Noah asked me for the third time. His velvety voice made even uncertainty sound alluring.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm very certain. In fact, father would probably thrilled to know I'm interested in the thing at all," I replied, grinning. Noah ducked his head slightly and looked at me through his long lashes.

"Listen to you call it a 'thing,'" Noah said, clicking his tongue. "I believe these 'things' are a testament to people's capacity for change."

"Listen to you talking about people's 'capacity for change,'" I repeated, teasing him. "I've seen the flag of the Confederacy flying in more than a few skies yet."

"Well, I cannot deny that some humans are just stubborn. But automobiles—those demonstrate ingenuity."

"I think you're only pretending to tolerate me so you can see one up close."

He flashed me a grin.

I had been unable to resist indulging the spark in Noah's eyes when I'd mentioned (in passing) my father's favored mode of transportation. The family automobile was still parked next to the cottage, where it had gathered a thick coating of pollen and bird droppings, taking up space and obstructing the view. Though I clearly recalled my tender backside and had less than affection for the thing, I'd offered to let Noah have a look. He'd never actually seen an automobile before and was exceptionally curious.

"It is…interesting," he said, a leap in his voice I'd never heard before. I giggled a little at his obvious fascination as he ran a hand gently over the black paint and tapped gently on the glass of the windshield. He peered in through the window; I opened the door and told him to sit in the driver's seat. He hesitated again.

"Noah, it's alright. Really."

He slid in and sat down, wrapping both of his exquisitely pale hands around the steering wheel and adjusting his posture gracefully. Much as I hated to admit it, the whole scene just…worked.

I suddenly found myself itching to be in the passenger seat of the automobile, driving down the streets of Charleston with Noah beside me.

"What do all of these dials mean?" Noah asked me, pointing to various things on the…was it the dashboard?

"One moment…it's hard to see."

"Just lean in and look."

I glanced at his face quickly, and then took a breath before leaning in across his chest to study the dials he had indicated. His proximity was electrifying, and I struggled to retain concentration.

"That one measures…speed, I think, see the increments? And I really don't know all of the others." I shook my head, noticing that some of my loosened hair fell across his arms and hand. "This one has to do with engine heat."

"May I see the engine?" Perhaps he thought he had to be extra-persuasive to wheedle this favor from me, for his voice seemed to be utterly alluring; soft, silky, and musical. His breath washed across my face; it was the sweetest scent I had ever smelled. It made my head spin.

"Of-of course," I stuttered, caught off guard. I pulled out of the automobile again and stood up, shaking my head to clear it. I lifted my hair from my neck; it was humid and sticky, despite the clouded sky.

"Elizabeth," Noah was saying calmly as he extricated himself from the vehicle. "You should know that I do not simply tolerate you. Nor do I feel like I would ever have to pretend to do anything around you."

I bit my lip; measured my breaths. "I-I'm glad." How eloquent.

"I hope you return the sentiments," Noah went on smoothly, smiling at me. I locked eyes with him again; his irises seemed to have returned to their usual, molten gold state. They melted me.

"Of course," I nearly whispered. "Of course I do. I love spending time with you, Noah." Was that too strong of a word? Certainly he could not…feel the same way?

There it was; the pained expression. I was so attuned to it now that it could not make its fleeting foray across his features without me seeing it. Was I somehow hurting him? It had to be me. I must have been doing something wrong, something that made him uncomfortable but that he was too polite—too well-paid—to point out.

Perhaps I be spending less time with him.

"You certainly can't get away from me around here," Noah said, with forced lightness to his tone.

I chuckled half-heartedly. Then, I turned to the hood of the automobile and studied it intently.

"I have no idea how to open it. I'm sorry."

"We're both intelligent people. I'm sure we can puzzle it out." He came to stand next to me, bringing a wave of his delicious scent. He reached under the eave of the hood and felt about; something snapped, and the hood flew upward. I flung myself out of the way, narrowly avoiding being smacked in the chin. Noah's hand caught it effortlessly, and carefully lifted it back.

"Are you alright, Elizabeth?"

"Fine," I said a little shakily. "Just startled."

He chuckled to himself. "Look at this. It's so intriguing…" he trailed off, gazing at the complicated tangle of machinery we had revealed within the automobile. I was far more intrigued by the beautiful line of his profile, and the flex and shift of his muscles underneath his shirt as he leaned over the engine. A strong smell of oil was wafting from it.

"Lubricant must travel through here…and here."

I grinned to see him so absorbed.

"And a coolant, possibly? So many things working together."

I bit my lip again. "When you think of it that way, it is interesting."

"But how does this make the wheels turn?" He had one pale finger hovering over the engine, moving it everywhere.

Suddenly, something flew back to me; words spoken by my father one day in spring. He had had the hood up like this, and was explaining the mechanisms of the engine to me with a relish. Bored, I had paid little attention. But now I recalled a few choice details.

"It's combustion," I said, trying to sound more confident than I was that that was the correct word. Noah turned to me, his expression rapt. "A sort of very small…explosion," I continued, my cheeks reddening. "When the automobile starts, a little spark ignites the fuel, which causes…combustion, which moves something, which moves something else, which turns the wheels." I wished heartily that I could remember more of the terminology.

Noah looked highly impressed; that softness stole into his eyes again. "Combustion, is the word?"

"I think so. There was something about…pistons, as well. I think those are what is moved by the combustion."

"Can you show me where those are?"

"I'm not sure. They should all look alike, very close to each other, I think…there! Those, maybe?" I gestured to three cylindrical objects nestled within the various other components. They, like everything else, were coated with grease.

"Elizabeth, I want to take this apart," Noah said very suddenly, sounding very passionate.

My heart leapt into my throat. "You can't, Noah, father would skin me alive."

He laughed. "Not this specific one. I want to take apart an engine like this and examine every part, figure it all out."

I let out my breath. "Are you getting bored of horses, then?" I joked in my relief.

"Never," he breathed, but he was still staring intently at the various components. I was vaguely surprised they all didn't melt under the scorching intensity of his eyes.

I straightened and craned my neck around, scanning the countryside around us. My mother and father had gone on a walk down the lane. The trees rippled overhead in the breeze; birds chirped pleasantly. The sky had been obscured for several days now, with occasional rain showers tickling the prairies, and I rather missed the sun. However, clouds notwithstanding, it was a lovely day; I'd found I was becoming fond of the South Carolina countryside, with its peaceful rhythms, wide open spaces, and leafy verdure…not to mention its breathtaking inhabitants.

It was a good day.

My fever broke in the night. Fortunate, because Dr. Carlisle Cullen was at my side immediately, fluffing my thin hospital pillow and holding a vial of clear liquid in one delicate hand.

"Mrs. Masen," he said, in that soothing voice, "you've been feverish for two days now." I remained silent for the moment, waking up, and turned my head to look at him, peer into his eyes. I felt a little stronger than I had before, but not much.

"I'm sorry to wake you now," he said, "but I needed to give you this." I narrowed my eyes; I thought I could hear the vaguest note of worry in his voice, something that had never showed before. That was cause for concern.

"What is it you're going to give me?" I asked in a rasping voice.

"A serum to clear your lungs. You haven't been able to cough while unconscious with fever. Bile will have accumulated." There was most definitely the tiniest crease of concern between his brows. I watched it suspiciously, but obediently held out my hand to receive the vial of liquid.

It was vile and bitter, but I swallowed it all, and immediately my chest began to heave seemingly of its own accord. Mucus spewed from my mouth into the cup that Dr. Cullen held ready.

When it was done, I groaned and leaned back again. "How lovely. All of that was in my lungs?" Admittedly, I felt considerably better.

"Yes," he answered rapidly.

He knew that I knew something was wrong. We locked eyes, and I tried to ignore the thrill that his golden gaze sent down my spine. "Doctor Cullen, what is the matter?"

Dr. Cullen's eyes left mine and flickered to something behind me. He opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing; he seemed to be deliberating.

So I gathered my meager strength and bunched my muscles, twisting and heaving in bed to look where his eyes had alighted.

My spinning head did nothing to mitigate the sheer horror that stole into my limbs. It was as if my very soul creaked to a halt.

"N-no…" I whispered. When I thought my body had been desiccated completely, scalding tears filled my eyes. "No, please…"

Edward lay in a cot just a few feet away, sleeping, his face devoid of all color. The profile, the edges and shape of him I loved so much twitched fitfully; I could see his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.

My son.

My son…

Edward. No, Edward…

I didn't stop to think; I screamed, tearing the blanket from me. I lurched from my bed, my feet hitting the floor for the first time in two weeks. My legs crumpled underneath me as my vision dissolved into yellow grains, and my knees slammed into the concrete. It took more strength than I knew I had to remain on all fours and battle the unconsciousness clawing at the edges of me.

"Mrs. Masen, no!" Dr. Cullen was around the bed in an instant, his arms locked around my torso. He heaved me upright in a stony, chilled embrace. "No! You're not well! You'll only hurt yourself!"

"Edward!"

"Stop it, Mrs. Masen!"

I flailed my limbs wildly. "Let go of me! Let me go to my son, you callous bastard!" My voice had found a renewed strength. I struggled tooth and nail. Carlisle Cullen's arms did not move.

I was a woman possessed. Edward, Edward…I could only see him sprawled out before me, his usually healthy, glowing form wracked with the cursed virus. Why, why had he kept coming here? My mind was paralyzed with fear.

Edward could… die.

The thought only mobilized my infirm, weak body into more action.

A burly nurse approached, ready to aid Dr. Cullen. He gestured for her to stay away.

"I can deal with this," he said. He reached out and pinned my arms to my sides, and bent to speak softly into my ear.

"Elizabeth," he said, and I was unsure of how he knew my first name. "Elizabeth, I'm so sorry. But please, consider yourself. You're incredibly ill. Outbursts like this will only quicken the virus' progress."

"Let me go to my son," I said in a voice thickened with grief.

"I cannot allow you to strain yourself."

"Let me go to Edward," I repeated. I pulled against his grip on my arms.

"No."

I whipped my head around and stared at him. And for the first time in my life, not a single shiver, not a single faltering thought passed through me as I locked gazes with a pair of molten ochre eyes. I was not fazed; I would not be intimidated or charmed by this damned vampire; I would not yield to some innate sense of danger. I felt no need to retreat, to shudder. I felt no desire to. I did not glare or sob; I just looked at him.

Let this vampire—let this man come between me and Edward, and I would not hold back.

He hesitated. I saw it pass through his eyes. He loosened his hold, and I staggered forward, nearly stumbling again.

"Go to him," I heard Dr. Cullen say softly behind me.

I fell to my knees next to my son's cot, my quavering breaths washing over his sleeping face. I placed a hand on his forehead; the other traveled down his side to grasp his hand.

"Edward," I whispered. My entire body ached. I felt unbelievably tired but I remained rigidly upright. "Edward…"

How had I let this happen? Why hadn't I forced him to stay away from me, away from the hospital? Why hadn't he seen sense? Why was this virus taking from me the people I loved most?

It was not supposed to end this way, I dying a slow death in a cramped hospital ward, awash in near-tangible misery, my son close behind me.

My son. My only son. My beloved son.

"Edward…" I stroked his hair. He did not wake. He continued to breathe quickly, perspiration beading on his brow. I pressed my lips to his cheek.

I felt Dr. Cullen's presence behind me.

"How long?" I said hoarsely. The tears came again and coursed freely down my cheeks.

"He was admitted yesterday, midday," was his quiet reply.

"Can he survive?" I asked rapidly, needing and dreading an answer.

"I don't know. He has a better chance than many. But he needs rest and fluids above everything else. …Mrs. Masen…"

"What?"

"Please, return to your bed now."

"No, thank you." I smoothed my thumb across Edward's cheekbone again and again.

"Elizabeth…"

"Don't call me that," I snapped angrily. Racing golden images scattered across my mind like broken glass, an insult to the situation. Pain I didn't need.

There was a pause.

"Very well." Quiet footsteps seemed to echo behind me.

And he left me with Edward.

_Why am I awake?_

I couldn't understand why the rough wooden beams of the attic ceiling suddenly filled my vision again, washed out in the seeping moonlight. I couldn't understand why I was once more aware of the blanket laying heavily on top of me; why I could hear the cottage creaking and the wind whispering through the trees outside. I had been sleeping a moment ago.

_Why am I awake?_

I fought to recall the dream that was slipping into the recesses of my mind. Visions, little vignettes steeped in emotion, flared to life like sparks behind my eyes. Gold-colored eyes, of course. Gold-colored eyes raking up and down my body; pale, unnaturally frigid hands on mine. A sweet smile on broad shoulders; rich blond hair brushing my cheek. Smooth, cold lips on my neck, shoulder, throat.

My face was on fire. My entire body was on fire. I sat up quickly, throwing the blanket off with a shaky breath.

My father and mother had never been terribly strict about my fraternizing with men, my social peers as they were. Eventually I had discovered that this was a rarity; they never insisted on constant chaperoning or awkward parlor teas or anything of the like. They had been through it twice with Marisol and Clare, and I think had found the whole business too exhausting to bother with a third time. Yes, my parents were not precisely insistent on societal propriety; that was why I had been so shocked when they took me from Charleston on account of my "wandering."

Propriety was never first and foremost in my mind, then. But sitting there in a puddle of moonlight, pressing heated fingers to my heated face, eyes wide, I understood immediately that this sort of dream was most certainly not proper, not at all.

I blinked several times, hugging my cotton nightdress to myself.

"Ah..." I let out a breath, less shaky than before. I straightened my cramped limbs and glanced out of the window at my shoulder, down to the grasses beside the cottage.

A pale streak. There and gone in an instant. I threw myself to my knees and snapped to the window, fingertips against the warped glass panes.

In the distance, down the road, the door to the barn was opened and shut so quickly that if it hadn't been for the faint light gleaming inside of it, I couldn't have made it out.

My heart thumped in my chest, making my blood course painfully underneath my skin. What was going on? No one should be stirring at this hour.

That couldn't have been a person; it moved too quickly. A coyote, then? Some other animal? My mind, wide awake now, spun through all the possibilities.

Then I froze, and I watched the mist of my last breath fade from the glass. Faintly, in the distance, I heard the scream of a terrified horse.

Oh, no. My muscles leadened. Mischa?

I stumbled from my cot and scrambled down the ladder from the attic, sprinting to the door to the room where my parents slept. A shriek built in my throat. Something was attacking the horses!

My hand was on the brass doorknob when something caught my eye from a window that faced the same direction as mine did above. Another pale shape, this one moving slowly enough that I could make out the human figure and the dark hair. Tobias. He ran to the barn, arms swinging, leaping lightly through the knee-high grass like a deer. Frightened as I was, I still found time to marvel at his grace.

But he was unarmed! What was he thinking, to approach a wild animal without any weapons?

Without thinking, I ripped my hand from the doorknob, leaving my parents asleep, and instead heaved my father's rifle from the shelf where it sat above the sink. I didn't know how to shoot it, but Tobias would, and he would need it to take down the wolf.

Or whatever it was.

I pulled open the cottage door and ran barefoot into the night, clutching the long rifle to my chest, stunned at its ungainly weight. The butt of it smacked into my knee repeatedly, slowing my progress.

Overhead, the moon was full and bright, illuminating the night so I had no need to regret not bringing a candle. I waded through the grasses at the fastest pace I could manage, not giving myself time to consider what I was doing. Plunging into the night in the general direction of a wild beast-certainly not the wisest of decisions. But I was terrified for Mischa and Tobias both, and somewhere, a part of my mind I did not acknowledge was afraid that Noah may have somehow run afoul of that pale beast.

"Tobias!" I called. The barn neared; I did not slow. I shifted the rifle into both hands, holding it at an angle. "Tobias!"

I had almost reached the barn door when it was thrown open and Tobias practically flew out, moving with a speed I had never encountered. I caught my breath and instinctively tightened my grip on the weapon.

Even that was not enough. Tobias launched himself at me, throwing his arms around me like an immovable vice. I screamed, but a cold hand plastered itself over my mouth, and the sound was cut short. One hand pressed me violently against his chest, so I was all but smothered against the marble-like hardness, the rifle pressed between the two of us. I felt the end of the barrel cutting into my neck so painfully I was sure my skin had been broken.

"You mustn't go in there, Miss Sussex," Tobias said to me, in a low voice that was astonishingly calm given the circumstances; as if he had not just tackled me and was not now trying to asphyxiate me.

I pulled my muscles in all directions, completely given in to instincts like a beast, trying desperately to break free.

"A wild animal broke in, Miss Sussex," Tobias was saying. I tried to ignore how good he smelled and instead focused on trying to free my fists, mashed between us. "The carnage...it is not a sight to be viewed by young ladies."

Finally he let me move back far enough to free my mouth; I fixed him with a vicious scowl. My fear was quickly dissolving into anger.

"Surely you need not have tackled me to keep me from viewing it, Mr. Tobias," I growled sharply. "Let me go."

He did so at once, something like abashment on his face. My heart thundered in my ears, matched only by my temper. The two of us faced each other in the little clearing before the barn, drenched in moonlight, the warm, sultry air heavy around us. My nightdress flapped about my ankles.

"Why are you carrying a rifle?" Tobias suddenly asked.

I ignored him.

"Has the animal gone?" I demanded.

Tobias sighed heavily; he glanced over his shoulder. "It left. I'm sorry to say, the horses are dead."

I felt sorrow settle on me; I stared at him. "Mischa?"

He nodded, eyes closed.

"What sort of animal...?" I trailed off heavily.

He didn't respond.

"I'm going in now," I told him.

"No!" In an instant, one of his hands locked around my wrist.

"Don't tell me what to do, sir."

"It-it's unsuitable-"

I glared icily at him. "With all due respect, Mr. Tobias, shut up."

His hand did not move. I started walking anyway. I did not get far.

"I cannot let you, Miss Sussex," Tobias said, his own eyes flashing with anger now. I turned to stare him down again, and I started; his eyes were...even in the darkness, I could tell his eyes were not usual. They were pitch-black...pure black, no rings of gold. Nothing.

A sudden thrill of fear swept through me. I saw his nostrils flare, as if he could sense my horror. I felt...cornered. Vulnerable. Like I was staring into the eyes of a hawk. My anger extinguished itself as quickly as it had blazed.

The wrist Tobias was holding was attached to the hand that clung to the rifle. I eyed it briefly, and then swung my other hand around and snatched at it. Tobias beat me there; he moved so quickly it was as if he hadn't moved at all. The rifle was torn from my grasp and he held it away from me.

"Let go of me!" I yelled, pulling with all my strength. It was like struggling against iron. His grip did not lessen.

Thinking rapidly, I used that to my advantage. I spun three-hundred and sixty degrees, folding my arm around myself, throwing myself against his chest as if we were executing an elaborate dancing trick. I threw my bare heel down on the toe of his boot; at the same time, I snaked my hand up and tangled it in his long black hair, grabbing a handful and yanking with all my strength.

Surprise was my finest ally; his grip loosened enough that I freed my wrist and spun again. Both of my hands closed around the rifle, momentarily.

The shot shattered the night's peaceful silence, but it was nothing compared to the earsplitting metallic clang that instantly echoed it, as if the rifle had fired point-blank at a steel bar. I yelped and released the rifle instantly, my hands flying to cover my ringing ears. My head ached from the noise; my heart fluttered in my throat. Wh..how had the rifle gone off? Whose hand had nudged the trigger?

...It had fired directly into Tobias' chest.

Tobias, the same man who was still standing, fully upright and mobile, in front of me, holding the rifle in limp hands. I felt my lips part as I stared at him, clearly unhurt, no blood, not a scratch. There was a single hole singed into the front of his tunic, just underneath his right collarbone.

He should be gasping, prone on the ground. He should be dying.

Tobias grimaced. I could only ogle at him, uncomprehending, as my ears sang shrilly.

A light flickered in the cottage. I blinked, and stared over his shoulder at it. The shot had awoken father and mother.

I glanced again at Tobias. His grimace had deepened, brows locked together. In a sweeping motion, he bent to pick up the shotgun with one hand, and, pivoting on one heel, he threw it into the air, where it arced silently over the barn and into the forest beyond.

My father shouted in the distance.

Neither Tobias nor I had moved. "Noah?" I whispered, almost silently, trying to get him to meet my gaze.

Tobias did not reply, but his eyes flickered toward the barn before they returned to the cottage. I felt my heart fall into my feet. Had Noah been in the barn when the animal...? Was he...?

Without thinking, I tore my gaze from Tobias and threw myself toward the barn. Tobias made a move toward me, but paused, as if weighing options, and then did not pursue. I swung open the barn doors and pushed myself inside, grasping and scrambling to close them behind me.

Let Tobias deal with father. I needed to find Noah, I needed time to let my heart and breathing slow, I needed to make sure Noah was alright.

Time was what I needed. And time, of course, was what I did not get.

A snarl curled in the darkness.

I froze in place. In the absence of moonlight, my eyes needed to adjust to the dark in the barn. Blurry, indistinct shapes loomed around me. Stall walls, draped with tack. Stacks of hay. A bench.

Every single hair on my body rose as one. My heart flew to panicked life again with abandon.

Tobias had said...Tobias had said that the animal had moved on.

Another sound; a low growl.

I began to shake. It was still there. I was going to die.

I should have fled immediately from the barn. Why didn't I flee? Surely my father's wrath would have been preferable to death. Surely, I could have made it before the beast attacked. I was only a step from the door.

But I was afraid to go outside, too. Outside was where Tobias was, a man...a creature I did not understand. I was afraid of him, standing there with a bullet hole in his shirt, pale and calm and serene, as if he hadn't just been shot. He was frightening. Incomprehensible. Inhuman. The unknown. I closed my eyes as the memory of that metallic clashing sound rang again and again against the sides of my skull, reverberating.

And I needed to find Noah. Noah was in danger. Noah needed help.

When I opened my eyes again, I could see more clearly. No animals were in sight, not even the horses. Everything looked as it should, not a single thing upset or out of place. Even the smells were all proper and there, hay and leather and...

And an indescribable sweetness.

Something shifted in Mischa's stall. The faintest of sounds. Noah?

I took a few slow, careful footsteps toward the gray mare's stall. Then a few more. Possessed by a morbid curiosity, I crouched low at the gate, and, barely brushing my fingertips against the wood, I peered through a gap between two uneven boards, as if their scant width would defend me against whatever beast I saw within.

Noah was crouched low like I was. He had one leg extended, bracing himself against Mischa's neck. From my angle, I could see that he had sunk his teeth to the gum in her flesh, his hands grasping on either side of his head. The mare's body was limp and lifeless.

What was he doing? I couldn't take my eyes from him; he looked so glorious even through my horror, a vision of pale pearlescent skin, golden hair, and sleek, silhouetted body, his muscles all flexing. A god...a god of the hunt, a warrior god. Weak metaphors tumbled through my dazed mind.

His neck was pulsing, throbbing rhythmically-I leaned a little closer, trying to see exactly why. I was horrified with myself.

He was swallowing...sucking, and swallowing. A gross bastardization of infant nursing, the oldest of reflexes...suck, swallow. Suck, swallow. I could see Mischa's veins pulling in her neck, in rhythm with Noah's movements.

Noah was...Noah was drinking her blood.

I gasped and gagged simultaneously, and instantly his head snapped upward. Confirming my realizations, a single drop of dark, thick liquid pooled at the corner of his mouth. It was a bizarre tableau, however, for above that macabre sight, his eyes glinted the soft shade of gold I loved, so vividly that I could see their color clearly in the shadows. He met my gaze through the little gap and I sucked in my breath, fear and temptation colliding inside me.

I hadn't blinked before I felt my feet leave the ground. Noah flung himself against me, pressing one forearm against my collarbone and wedging a knee into my abdomen; the two of us careened backward away from Mischa's stall, and I was weightless against his impetus. Before I could utter a sound, Noah slammed me against the far wall of the barn, rattling the entire structure. My breath spilled from my mouth, and I gasped hoarsely as pain knifed through my entire body. Sparkling gold bloomed in my eyes.

"N-Noah," I gasped. His arm against my chest threatened to snap my collarbone.

Noah's arms were just as steely as Tobias' had been, and just as immobile. It was as if a rigid cage held me captive against the wooden planks. But he was closer to me than he had ever been, his entire body just an inch from mine; I could feel him panting, and the sweet smell intensified so that my overwhelmed senses quailed against a whirlwind of mingled pleasure and terror.

Noah's eyes met mine. I was trembling, unsteady. The golden irises were fierce and blank. I whimpered. His ivory throat contracted as he swallowed, again and again. Weakly, I tried to snare my gaze elsewhere.

"Elizabeth?" he said, suddenly, quietly. He swallowed again. "Elizabeth?" He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, shaking his head. The pressure of his arm eased against me, and I heaved a quavering breath.

"Noah?" I choked out, bewildered, afraid. "What..." How was I to put all my thoughts into one question?

Noah slowly, tentatively, lifted a hand and brushed a stray hair from my face, easing it gently behind my ear. He inhaled deeply, leaning closer.

Suddenly, my body felt paralyzed with something other than fear.

Noah's eyes seemed to melt, shifting from hard and possessed to soft and gleaming in an instant. He held my gaze for just a moment, and then his eyes skipped down to my neck. He sucked in another deep breath, and swallowed once more. Something came ablaze in his eyes; it was like reading his thoughts, watching all the emotions play across those shining ochre irises. His lips parted. Desire.

He continued staring at my neck, so intently that I lifted my own hand and gingerly pressed my fingers to the place upon which he was fixed. They met moisture; when I lifted my shaking hand to my face, I could see shining liquid on my fingertips.

My blood. From where the rifle had cut into me.

Before I could really process this, before my proper, sensible self could make the connection and take action, Noah murmured my name.

"Elizabeth," he moaned softly, eyes upon my neck. My abdomen contracted; my heart skipped, hearing that single word in his voice. I couldn't move. Despite all my instincts screaming to the contrary, I didn't want to.

Hesitantly, Noah bent down, ducking his head under my chin. I felt his icy lips brush my throat, and, prone, a whispering murmur of my own escaped my mouth. His lips parted and his tongue caressed my broken skin, sweeping the blood away. He groaned, and I felt the reverberations across my skin.

Somewhere, somehow, a tattered thought stumbled across my mind. What is happening...doesn't matter...what is...who is...The feelings coursing through me were entirely foreign, and I did not want them to stop. My hands fell limply to my sides.

The barn door creaked open again, and Tobias stood for one instant framed in the doorway, silhouetted against the moonlight. He took in the sight of Noah and me, and a snarl ripped from him.

Moving soundlessly, impossibly fast, he sprinted and rammed into Noah, tearing him away from me. I found my voice again and gave a strangled, quiet sort of yell. Tobias and Noah rolled, struggling, onto the dirt floor between the rows of stalls, a tangle of arms and limbs. Violent growls echoed off the thin barn walls. I stared, petrified.

"Elizabeth!" my father shouted, from outside the barn. I whipped around, peering wildly into the darkness outside, but saw nothing. Abruptly the snarls and tearing sounds behind me stopped, and I spun again, only to see naught but an indistinct blur tearing off in the other direction. The back barn door was torn open, and Tobias and Noah were gone.

"Elizabeth!" called my father again. He appeared in the first doorway, panting and sweaty. "Good God, Elizabeth. Come here this instant."

Mind numb, body quaking, I could do nothing but heed him. When I was near enough, he seized both of my shoulders in rigid hands and bore his gaze into me.

"Tobias told me about the wolf," he said, so angry as to be breathless. Tears rose in my eyes-tears of fright, of anger, of confusion, and of utter, devastating loss.

"He told me about your scheme to steal my gun and shoot it yourself," my father continued. "What the devil were you thinking? For God's sake, Elizabeth."

I was heaving by then. "I-I'm s-sorry, father."

Suddenly, he brought me to him, clutching me to his chest as if afraid I might dissolve in his grasp. I buried my tear-wet face in his nightshirt.

"Tobias caught up to you just as I did. Did he...did he kill it?" asked my father.

I nodded. "Y-yes. Dragged...he dragged its body off."

"My child," breathed my father. "Elizabeth. I can scarcely comprehend...you have very nearly sent me to an early grave."

I could only nod again, still shaking. Hands burning, neck burning, eyes burning. A flickering reel of images passed underneath my lids: blood pooling, Mischa dead, the hole in Tobias' shirt, Noah...Noah's eyes, his breath, my name on his voice. His skin on my skin. So cold, so unnaturally frigid, and yet I ached for its loss. My entire body ached.

My father and I were still standing, locked together, in the empty barn. The night around us sang with a thousand crickets against the harmony of the breeze. The scent of hay wafted, and, with it, the faintest, lingering touch of that otherworldly sweetness. I shuddered.

"I have obviously made a mistake, bringing you here," said my father after a time.

I didn't respond.

"We will be leaving by midday tomorrow."

"What?" I pulled away from him, almost shocked at how weak his grip was compared to that of Tobias. "Father!"

"Do not speak to me that way, Elizabeth," snapped my father. "I brought you here to get you out of the city, to show you what more there is to life, in hopes that your restlessness would fade. Instead, it has only made things worse."

"No, father!"

"Stop it, Elizabeth," he said. "You behaved more rashly tonight than I would ever have thought you capable. And..."

I stared at him, my cheeks still traced with tears. If we left...I didn't know when, or if, I would ever see Noah again. But how could I want to?

"And I have exposed my child to danger-my family, to danger. This was foolish." My father heaved a sigh. "A foolish idea."

I pressed a palm to my neck. My blood was still flowing there.


	5. Chapter 5

My world was a world of shapes and smells. My head, if I still had a head-if I hadn't been banished to the depths of Hell itself-felt filled with leaden weight, a sloshing molten metal that burned from the inside out. Around me, the shapes moved, but colors, outlines, all was indistinct. The air smelled rotten, sour, like unchanged linens.

I swam in a miserable world of orange lantern light, the taste of my own blood clotted in my mouth. There was something important, something so direly important that my body itself did the remembering. The person I was, had been, had nothing to do with it. I ached with a formless need. What was it? What was it? Danger, death.

The world did not make sense. I felt bathed in fire.

A frigid hand on my forehead, liquid silk. The breath that hissed from my throat tore at the skin like a hundred thousand knives.

The cold fingers, everlastingly cold, brushing something from my face. My hair. The fingertips tracing my temple, down, across the thin skin of my eye. The fingertips bringing my face to life again, reminding me that I had features, a face.

The iciness, the fingers sliding down my skin, across my jaw, drifting down to a scar, an old scar, on my neck. There they lingered.

Stillness.

We returned to Charleston in an automobile packed hastily, with a chest of disordered linens and a crate of early summer squashes my mother had wanted from the garden. I hadn't slept, and sat quiet in my seat in the same worn cotton dress I had arrived in. As we rode by the barn, I lifted my eyes. Nothing.

Home was a brown-bricked, triple-storied house that shouldered out at the intersection of two fairly busy streets. It had a wide, wraparound porch, columned and necessary in the sweltering summers.

I had thought I would miss it sorely. But I went straight through the door, past our startled maid, and into my own chamber. There I curled up in bed, declining supper.

That night the full moon cast thick, white bars of light through my window. I sat up in my bed, which felt chilly despite the sultry weather. I kept a hand on the stiff bandage at my neck and stared down into the empty street outside. Then I pushed the window open, to listen to the peaceful beat of the surf, and the dull ringing of bells at the marina. Even such sounds, so familiar as to be my lullabies, could not settle my mind.

Had I seen the Devil himself? There seemed to be no other explanation. As much as I relived the icy tongue on my neck, my name whispered, a mouthwatering sweetness, I could not deny what I had seen. And I knew I was not mad, because Tobias had tried to prevent me from seeing. He had known. Because he was like Noah, whatever that was.

Noah, sucking the blood from Mischa as children suck the juice from oranges. Noah nearly flying, pinning me to the wall as if I had been charged by an ox.

Like any old, old city, Charleston had its stories. Of ghouls, of hauntings, of the spirits of sailors that visited naughty children in the night. It even had stories of creatures that thirsted for the blood of humans. We called them sambosas, which I later learned was a bastardization of a West African word that our ancestors had picked up from their slaves. But my mother and father only told me sambosa stories when I was a misbehaving little grl. I hadn't thought of such things in over a decade. So much time had passed that I could remember no real details.

I shuddered, and gathered my bed linens about myself. Something in me, some part of my spirit, seemed to have fled in the past day and a half. I felt stunned into complete silence.

My body betrayed me. When I slept, I dreamed of eyes like pools of gold, and cool, hard arms, and a deep, deep kiss, like plunging myself into a snowdrift. And when I woke, I found myself covered in slick, cold sweat.

"God damn this," I muttered, shocking myself.

A week passed like this; I spent my days morosely, my nights in fervent dreams.

At some point in time-I don't know whether day or night, nor how much time had passed since my last coherent thought-someone near to me spoke Edward's name. In those familiar syllables, my body found the source of its ache, its nameless anxiety. I clung to that name as if it anchored me in an open sea, and I dragged myself into awareness by its sheer repetition in my mind. Edward, Edward, Edward.

I was dying, I knew that much. Given the fire of my fever, I was surprised my brain hadn't already frittered away, like so much fat in a skillet. Perhaps it was only the ministrations of Dr. Carlisle Cullen that kept me with merely one foot inside death's door.

Dr. Carlisle Cullen. I had business with that man. Something of the woman in me nursed a stout stubbornness, and if I had a thing to do, I did it. I had married young, raised a child near single-handedly in a lower-middle-class home, with a war going on and an epidemic raging. Such circumstances had not left me a wilting flower, nor, at this point, particularly afraid of the specter of Death. I had met him once before, and the experience had been nothing less than the most bittersweet moment of my life.

Aware once more of the hospital, I turned my head. Someone had laid my cot parallel to Edward's. He was asleep; for a minute or two, I watched his chest rise and fall underneath a thin blanket. His face was flushed, his copper hair curled with sweat.

It was early evening. By Providence or by sheer luck, I saw Dr. Cullen walk in for his nighttime shift. He was slinging his stethoscope around his neck, ethereally beautiful even in the ugly lamplight. I waited patiently for him to make his rounds, checking in on other patients lined up to die.

When he saw I was awake, he went right up to me. "Mrs. Masen," he began, looking at me with his sober kindness, "I'm glad to see you're awake. I wanted to apologize to you for manhandling you the way I did. It was extraordinarily improper conduct, though I wish you would consider your condition more."

"There's no need to apologize."

He made to offer me another vial of the serum to clear my lungs, but I shook my head weakly. "I don't want to cough. I need Edward to stay sleeping for the moment." As I said it, I reached over and gently entwined my hand with my son's. He murmured a fevered sound, then fell back into slumber. A few moments elapsed while the vampire stood patiently nearby.

"I need to talk to you, Dr. Cullen," I finally said. "About my son. Has he woken at all since he was admitted?"

Dr. Cullen hesitated, then said, "No."

"And that's unusual, isn't it? Normally, even the sickest of us will wake on occasion?"

He nodded, frowning. "He's very ill, much more so than I expected."

"You musn't think Edward weak. Quite the opposite. He has an grown man's disposition; ever serious, and strong, protective," I went on. I paused to wait for a dizzy spell to pass. Dr. Cullen seemed slightly bemused.

I glanced at his face, and observed that his eyes were ringed halfway with deep jet black. Yet he seemed calm as always, not volatile in the slightest. I allowed myself to marvel a little. Then I said, "Have you been eating, Dr. Cullen?"

"Excuse me?" He knitted his brows.

"You look...hungry. Tired. You especially should be taking care of yourself," I said.

"Don't worry about me, Mrs. Masen," he replied carefully. "I am in good health."

"I would expect so." I tried to keep my voice at a casual level, but my gaze was pointed. "As I was saying, were it not for things like disease and wars, I would frankly expect Edward to live forever." I looked up at my doctor. "He's very determined."

"I am certain," Dr. Cullen said, standing absolutely still.

My head was spinning horribly, to a point where I could no longer ignore it. I laid my head back, closed my eyes. But Dr. Cullen's hand did not come to rest on my brow.

Noah came to me in the night. I think I had known that he would. The night before, I had removed the dressing from the cut on my neck, to let it breathe, and to clean off the crusted blood there. It had healed into a thin, pink line.

I was asleep when the alien sweetness stole into my nose, waking me at once. Noah was standing outside of my open window, a pair of golden eyes suspended in the silhouetted body of an angel. He was not smiling, but looked as if he had witnessed a dozen battles since the night in the barn. I rose to my knees, trancelike, and raised a hand tentatively. Instantly he was next to me.

For the longest stretch of time we merely looked at each other, each trying, I think, to peel something like truth from the other's gaze. My breathing was somewhat ragged. I realized that he was not breathing at all, which jolted my heart. I had forgotten-though I could not see how-how beautiful he was, how perfect. I drank in the shape of him sitting on the edge of my bed, creasing the coverlet.

Finally, he spoke. "Are you afraid?"

How I had missed his musical voice. It was like hearing a melody from my childhood.

"No," I whispered.

He looked at the wall over my shoulder, and I tried not to sense the ferocity in his face. I was fiercely blocking the violent memories from my mind; it half worked.

"I don't consider you a strange man in the night," I continued softly. He cringed a little, something I had never seen him do.

"Elizabeth," Noah replied, closing his eyes. "I am no man."

I thought for a moment. "I know."

"Tobias and I nearly killed each other," he murmured abruptly. "But I had to find you. I had to apologize. Elizabeth-" my heart jumped every time he said my name- "I am so, so sorry. I have never felt so despicable in all my life. I worried that if I came to you, you would die of fright, if you hadn't already. It was selfish of me to come, and I'm sorry for that too, but I just needed to see-I needed you to...understand."

Somewhere in the street below, a horse whinnied. He saw me wince, and he looked as if he were in physical pain.

"I'm not afraid of you," I repeated. "But I think you ought to expect that I may never understand."

"I realize that," he said after a moment.

"I would like to."

"Would you?" he said, a little sharply.

"Yes," I said firmly. Then, I couldn't help it: I blurted a burning question. "Are you the Devil?"

Noah half-smiled. "Over the eons, there have been hundreds of theories proposed. And that remains one of the most popular. No," he said, "I am not the Devil. None of us are. I have lived-what you might call life-for a very long time, and I have yet to see Satan manifested on our Earth."

I must have looked visibly relieved, for he said, "Don't tell me that, of all your concerns, consorting with the legions of Hell was the greatest?"

"I was not sure whether or not...vampires...also happened to be devils," I said. He caught my gaze and held it; did he think he needed my approval, my forgiveness? I'm not sure he knew what he needed. But my admission, I think, was a balm for him, something to soothe that inner struggle I had always seen in his reflexes, his strange behaviors, and most of all, in his expressive eyes. Just for a person to say what he was and not blanch, not shrink away. But I don't know if he ever fully understood the effect he had on me. My body yearned perversely to be close to him again. It was begging for its own death.

I tried to distract myself with words. "When I saw you...in the barn, I was frightened, yes."

I watched his shoulders bunch with tension. He looked away from me.

"I watched you drink from her. And then you came for me. Noah," I said, "you had so many opportunities to attack me."

He knew what I was going to say. "Tobias and I hunt only animals," he said. "We're not all human feeders. It's rare, to do what we do, but...we were human." He tone was eclipsed by pain. "I had three sisters, once. They were killed by the vampire that turned me. I would never, could never, be like her."

"That's why Mischa was so afraid of you."

"I am a predator. Nothing more."

"You're more than a predator."

"You saw me. Mindless. A beast. I nearly killed you. And I feel more strongly about you than I ever have about anyone else. Do you understand? Can you? How it feels to come that close to murder?"

"No, of course not. But-"

"Elizabeth. I'm so sorry. Your blood. You can't imagine, it's like a spell, a nightmarish enchantment. When it was there, flowing, I simply...I lost..." With his hand massaging the skin of his temples, he looked like a carving, a marble sculpture of grief. I knelt, and pushed myself closer to him. He went, if possible, even more rigid. I touched one of his shoulders. He remained perfectly still.

"You looked like an animal. Any other animal. Feeding," I said, so softly I could scarcely hear myself. "Perhaps that isn't a good justification. But like any other creature, you have to eat. That's all I see."

"And if my instincts had their way, I would feed on you, Elizabeth," he said. "I nearly did."

His stubbornness grated against me, striking a match that flared in my gut. My voice rose.

"Do you want me to congratulate you, then? On your decision not to hunt humans? What would that mean to you, Noah?" I demanded. "From what you're saying to me, it seems that you've had more than enough time to look for absolution. If you haven't managed to find it yet, then I doubt very much you'll find it with me. I've told you what I think."

I folded my arms in an unladylike fashion and waited for him to respond, trying to calm my breathing. I wondered if I truly was afraid. I did not feel fear like I had when I saw that Tobias' eyes were the purest black, or when Noah had thrust me backward with his forearm, nearly knocking my unconscious. That fear had been animal, churning upward uncontrollably from my stomach like the tides. The fear I ought to have felt now should be from the presence of the alien; the kind of fear fueled not by the unknown, but by the beginnings of a mystery that is just beginning to show its secrets to you.

But as before, as always, I suspected that I had some kind of mechanism broken inside me. The nervous tension, the lightheadedness I felt at his proximity had steeped my mind with a strange, simultaneous clarity and need. He told me...he told me that he felt something for me. I could not help but respond to that with every part of me, body and mind.

Noah lifted his head. Looked at me. He was so stunningly beautiful, and his eyes so riveted with sadness, that he took my breath away. "I am sorry," he said, and it sounded, again, like a song forgotten.

Then his lips were against mine, and he pulled me to his chest with a gentle hand. Somewhere in the cold, cold, exquisite pleasure of it, and the sensation of silken ivory against my tongue, I felt his thumb sweep across my throat, to the join of my neck to my jaw, where he felt my quickened pulse. He broke away from me, whispered my name to my brow, and into my hair, and I tasted, for the first time, the sweet savor of the forbidden. I kissed his collarbone and took deep satisfaction in his vocal response. His mouth found mine once more, and his scent and all of him set me ablaze. He ran a hand through my hair, down to my waist, where his fingers hardened against my skin.

With his lips at mine, and his hand at my throat, I knew that we were two creatures suspended: I between fervent desire and an inevitable vulnerability, he between a love for my person, and a need for the blood within me. The violence of these things meeting physically, our knowledge and our desires, was maddening. So we dove deeper into each other, for shelter, for comfort, for, perhaps, love.

He could have killed me at any moment. He did not. I think, in the end, he considered that a greater testament to his feelings than any kiss, any caress, any promise.

And that, in the end, is what he left me with. My life, intact, but shaken. That was all he could have ever given me. He was not for my world. We both understood.

I spent most of the night in Noah's arms, as if transported. But just before the dawn I watched him leap to the empty Charleston street, a lovely ghost in the moonlight, and catch my gaze from below. His eyes shone. Then he turned to walk away into the shadows at the end of the road. As the warm salted winds of the ocean swept in through my window, they began to melt the chill of winter on my lips.

Edward was not awake. That much I knew. And I knew that neither he nor I was long for this world. But I had nearly lost my voice and all hope. It was high noon and Dr. Cullen was not yet there. I needed to hold on, for just a few more hours. The concept of all that time confounded me. Blearily, I watched Edward sleep. I watched my own chest as I breathed. I watched myself cough bright scarlet blood onto my blankets. I lived.

Dr. Cullen arrived and I knew what I had to do to get his immediate attention. Using the last of my strength, I pushed myself up into a sitting position, and, I think, held myself there through sheer force of will. He came at once.

"Mrs. Masen," he began.

"Elizabeth. You can call me that now, as you'll need to remember to put it on the papers." I blinked, but could not clear my vision entirely. "Dr. Cullen," I rasped. I laid back down. He knelt smoothly by my cot and felt my head.

"Ahh... Dr. Cullen. My son."

"Edward is not yet gone. Elizabeth."

"Listen to me."

"I am listening." I began to shake uncontrollably.

"Dr. Cullen, you must do anything you can to save Edward," I said. I peered into his hypnotic golden eyes, searching for comprehension. He had to understand. He had to hear what I was telling him.

"I am a doctor. I took an oath to always do everything in my power for my patients," Carlisle Cullen said in reply. He smiled wanly at me but my heart did not flutter.

"No, Dr. Cullen. _You_ must do... anything _you_ can to save Edward. You. I am asking you for this. Do you understand me?"

I watched him glance around us; nobody awake within earshot. The ward was quiet, abuzz only with coughs, snores, and the oily squeak of cart wheels.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he finally said.

"You do know-" I had to cough, and he held the handkerchief for me, "what I mean," I finished, more weakly than I wanted. I was having trouble focusing on him.

He looked as though he had been struck in the face. He was so stunned, in fact, he forgot to blink, forgot to breathe, and forgot, apparently, that his eyes had lost their black rings, and were a lovely soft gold once more.

"I-I don't think-" he began.

"It's your eyes," I whispered. "I know your eyes, Dr. Cullen. If I did not know them I would not be asking. This is what I want. I want my son to have a chance."

Dr. Cullen looked in terrible pain. "You can't possibly understand what you're asking."

"I know that he won't be a monster. Not with you. I know that he could survive this. I know that there's beauty in the world that he hasn't seen. Hear me. Dr. Cullen." I felt unconsciousness clawing its way at the back of my mind again. "Please."

Carlisle Cullen was clearly stricken. He started to rise.

"Look around you," I insisted hoarsely. "This is humanity. Would you leave him to face all of this horror alone?" I was wheezing. "You aren't...like them. The rest of them. I knew someone like you once. He was struggling but he was good. I just...if you can't...save the life he has now...you can give him...more."

The doctor's beautiful face was expressionless. Then he acted as if he were about to speak, but I closed my eyes. This was not the last thing I wanted to see. My hand found Edward's once more; I felt the sweat of his palm. Then I sank into a stillness I had never known, and liquid gold-the gold of sunlight, of a wheat field, of angelic eyes-surrounded me, a sweetness clearing away all else.


	6. Epilogue

Epilogue

_The pain was unimaginable. I had meditated on death before and had never come to this conclusion, but perhaps that only spoke to the limits of my fantasies. I found myself in such excruciating agony that I think I separated from what had once been my body, and I was able to consider the possibility of an afterlife. A place with father, and with mother, if she had not survived. Did I believe in such things? I wanted to. But who wouldn't, when one's skull is cleaving in two?_

_Time passed. I became a strange, alien presence. I decided I had gone mad from pain, and I vaguely hoped, as a lunatic might, that this wasn't all that death would ever be. An endless acidic bath, a chamber of needles._

_But then I opened my eyes. Eyes I had not thought I had. There was a place on my right shoulder-another reacquired body part-that throbbed like something alive and parasitic._

_"Hello, Edward," said a familiar voice._


End file.
